


L'amour des deux lapins

by Polly_Lynn



Series: The Bunny Verse [1]
Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Family, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 00:17:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1798570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This isn't theory. This is reality. Warm, solid, heart-breakingly adorable reality, and he's in love. He's in love, and they both know how that story goes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Uh. Literal fluff. Metaphorical fluff. 
> 
>  
> 
> The artwork is by lindosaur/ninabambina.

  


 

 

* * *

"No."

It's the only thing she's said for the last hour. Literally. Just that one syllable from the minute she walked in the door. Not even _No, Castle._ He knows he's getting somewhere when she says that. He's getting nowhere now. Nothing but _No_ for at least an hour.

He refuses to accept the possibility that this is hopeless. He's in love. He's been in love for, like, four hours. It _cannot_ be hopeless.

He's just going to have to wear her down. He can do that. He's had practice. Lots and lots of practice. She doesn't stand a chance.

"Kate, just . . ."

"No." She turns the page without looking at him. At them. She won't even _look_ at them.

She hasn't looked at them since she got home. Not since that first cool glance. That first flat, emphatic _No._ She didn't even _ask_ about them. Just _No._ Just like that.

His frustrated sigh breaks off abruptly.

She didn't even ask about them.

She doesn't want to know their story. She's _afraid_ to know their story.

She should be.

He wants this, so he'll _tell_ her. He is prepared to pull out all the stops, and since when does she think she can resist one of his stories?

Ok, fine, so she resists them all the time. She has some freaky power of resistance when it comes to his stories, but this is different.

This isn't theory. This is reality. Warm, solid, heart-breakingly adorable reality, and he's in love. He's in love, and they both know how that story goes.

He opens his mouth. He's about to start setting the scene. The rainy day and the dismal lighting inside. The noise. The kind, but overworked staff and the cramped space. The near disaster and dramatic rescue. Oh, it's a _good_ story. She doesn't stand a chance.

He's about to start, but he shuts his mouth again with a click loud enough that she twitches. She doesn't look up. She turns another page with more force than strictly necessary.

It's a trap.

It could be a trap. She might be counting on the story. She might be waiting for just that. For all the loopholes and weaknesses and issues she thinks he hasn't thought of. She might be coiled and ready to strike with all her logic and practicality.

He looks down and his own heart flips again. He shifts his arms and buries his nose for a moment in the warm, quiet softness. The dark curve of shadow fitted against the lighter, dappled expanse.

He's in love, and he has to be careful. She might be baiting him into telling the story with all her not looking and monosyllables. It might be a trap.

No, he'll save the story for now. The story will be his finishing move.

He's got other moves. Plenty of other moves.

"I think you're being unreasonable."

That gets nothing. Not even a _No_ , which is weird. It drives her crazy when he uses the _U_ word. The _U_ word generally leads to bodily harm. At the very least, the _U_ word should merit a _No, Castle._ The _U_ word should get him _somewhere._

It doesn't, though. He watches carefully, but . . . nothing. No reaction. No pulsing vein in her forehead. Not even an eyebrow twitch.

He wonders if she's doping. Not doping. Whatever the opposite of doping is.

Drinking, he supposes. Or partaking of any CNS depressants.

But she's had nothing but water since she got home. And anyway, wouldn't that lower her resistance to them? Wouldn't that just make her all loose and uninhibited? Wouldn't it make her melt all the faster?

There's movement in his arms. Synchronized stirring as the two of them seek more of one another and settle heavier against his chest. He's already melted. He's long since been reduced to goo, which makes it hard to strategize.

Not that he should have to strategize here.

He doesn't get it. How can _anyone_ resist them?

She can't. She couldn't if she'd look. But she won't even look.

His arms are tired and his back has some notes on chasing her around for the last hour in this awkward position. He lowers himself into the armchair carefully. He clamps his thighs together to make as much of his lap as possible.

He loosens his right shoulder and concentrates on unhinging his stiff, creaky elbow. _Ow._ And that's just the little one. _Tiny._ She's tiny. She weighs pretty much nothing, but he's hardly put her down since the first moment he saw her. His whole arm is one tight length of protesting muscle.

He manages to ease her into the mega-lap without waking her, though. He breathes a sigh of relief. Kate has to look some time—she can't realistically go the rest of her life without ever looking at him again—and he wants them asleep if he can manage it. They're so _cute_ when they're asleep. They're so cute period, but it's absolutely over the top when they're asleep. All twitchy little noses and paws.

He curls a palm protectively along the little one's side to keep her from tumbling off into the chair. Fine black hairs splay against the white of his palm and his heart stutters a little. She's not just cute. She's beautiful. Dark and lustrous with blaze of white around each eye. Another smudge of white just under her nose bleeding down over her chin. _Gorgeous_.

Castle sets to work on his other arm. He smooths his hand over the freckled coat as he considers his options, enjoying the play of colors, dark brown lightening almost to cream under his fingers. It's more complicated. This guy is big. He's solid and fidgety even in sleep. He's sweet. Good natured and a determined snuggler, but he's just so _big._ He's been harder to manage all along, and the left side of Castle's body has been working itself into a dull, aching knot for a while now.

They're both asleep. Cuteness maximized. If she'd just _look_ it would be game over. He unbends his elbow a fraction of an inch and his whole arm spasms. There's a flurry of activity, then. Suddenly, there are flailing ears and thumping feet and _shit_ he's going to have to figure out how to trim their claws.

Castle just manages to catch the scruff of loose fur around the big guy's neck before he goes sailing off the edge of the chair. He wedges the solid bulk of his body in the crevasse between his hip and the high leather arm. He angles his knee out to form a make-shift pen. Tiny eyes give him a baleful stare and close again. He's asleep.

Castle roughs up the tawny fur between his ears with an affectionate smile. He turns his attention back to the little one. She's asleep, too. Her brother's outburst hasn't fazed her in the slightest. She's perched on his thigh, still and sleeping.

Perfectly still.

Something about it makes him nervous all of a sudden. He jogs his knee gently, but she doesn't move. The tiny body lists from side to side, but she doesn't move. He chirrups her under the chin and there's still nothing.

Alarm rises in his throat. "Kate."

"No." She turns another page.

"Beckett, I need . . . something's wrong."

She closes the book with an emphatic clap. "Castle, don't try to play me. I said _no_."

"Kate, I mean it. Please just . . . please . . ."

The bigger one senses Castle's agitation and wakes. He scrabbles frantically and it's all Castle can do to keep him from leaping up and over the arm of the chair while he cups the too-still smaller body against his thigh.

Kate is there in an instant. Something in his voice makes her a believer, and thank God for that. She's there.

"Take her," he pleads. "She's not moving. Something's wrong."

Kate's hands curl around his. She lifts the tiny weight from his thigh and brings it close to her face. She falls in love. He sees her fall in love and feels sick. It's too late. She's in love, but it's too late.

Kate turns away, cradling the still little thing against her shoulder and murmuring.

Castle scoops his arms around the bigger one and pulls him to his chest. His heart is doing terrible things. Racing and tumbling and not working right at all. He pushes out of the chair and follows.

"Is she . . . Kate." He can barely make his mouth work. He buries his fingers in the thick fur of the bundle in his own arms and wonders what he did wrong. How he could have been so stupid.

Kate pivots toward him. The look on her face is amazing. Consternation and joy. Aggravation and love. Absolute love.

"She's fine, Castle," she breathes. "She's just fine."

She holds her hands out to him just a little. Like she can't bear to have the little beauty too far away from her body. He can't blame her.

She's awake now. She's awake and staring up at Kate with dark, intelligent eyes. One heavy ear twitches up to its full, majestic height and comes to rest again. She stretches her front paws. Tests their strength against Kate's sheltering palm. She bunches her tiny body and hops once. She does a quarter turn in mid-air and lands again perfectly.

Kate lets out a delighted laugh. The little rabbit wriggles from head to toe and settles into the contours of Kate's hands. Foundation and shelter she accepts like they're due to her. They are. She's not asleep. She's content. She's home.

Castle grins all over his face. He wants to go to them. He wants wrap himself around the two of them. His arms tighten reflexively at the thought and he gets a hefty thump to the sternum for his sins.

He looks down, suddenly remembering his own burden. The rabbit looks briefly annoyed. His nose twitches reproachfully.

"Sorry, buddy," Castle whispers as he strokes a hand down the arc of his spine. The nose stops, and he'd swear the rabbit is giving him a goofy smile. He'd swear to it. "Your sister scared me."

"Sister?" Kate's trying for skeptical. She's trying for logic and practicality, but she's not having much luck. She trails a fascinated fingertip down the drooping black silk of the rabbit's ear. She's in love. "Castle, they're not even the same kind of rabbit."

Castle shrugs. "Maybe, maybe not. They're still family."

Kate shoots him what she probably thinks is a hard look, but he's not afraid. Not right now anyway. She'll make him pay for this. She'll poke holes in the story. She'll give him put out, long-suffering looks for the sake of appearances. Later, she will, but right now she's in love.

She's in love.

  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This isn't theory. This is reality. Warm, solid, heart-breakingly adorable reality, and he's in love. He's in love, and they both know how that story goes."

Kate wakes the moment she feels Castle's arm loosen around her waist. She waits a second. Gives him the benefit of the doubt, even though he hasn't exactly earned it tonight. She waits a second, then snatches him around the wrist when his arm moves to withdraw entirely.

"She's _fine_ , Castle." She rolls to face him.

He's frozen. A shaft of lamplight tips in from the office and falls across his face. That was their compromise: All the office furniture shoved to the sides to accommodate the ridiculously large pen he'd convinced someone to deliver after 9 p.m., and a nightlight that he freely admits is for his benefit. He's worried.

She'd only just managed to talk him out of sleeping in one of the armchairs in the office. He's been up half a dozen times already, and here they are again. He's frozen, his face a ridiculous mixture of sheepish and defiant.

And worried. He's genuinely worried. She almost regrets the No Rabbits in the Bedroom rule. For his sake. Definitely for his sake.

"She's fine," she says again. It sounds convincing. She's almost a believer herself, but not quite. She's so small. The smart, feisty, beautiful thing. She's really so small.

Kate lets go of Castle's wrist and edges closer. Nudges her nose under his chin and tells herself that it's comfort. That she's giving and he's receiving. "They're both just fine."

"I know," he sighs into her. His arm falls heavy around her waist. They jostle together into a comfortable heap, her calf winding between his. He lifts her head gently and tugs her pillow so his overlaps it.

"Sorry," he murmurs when they're settled. "I must be driving you crazy."

"No," she mumbles against him. It's true and it's not true. She's driving herself a little crazy. He's just a little more . . . out there with it. She doesn't know how to do that. Yet. She's working on it.

Lightning fast, his left hand skims the shirt up over her lower back and finds the one spot she's apparently ticklish. "Lies, Beckett. You know the penalty for lies."

"Ok, ok," she gasps. She snatches at his wrist again. "You're driving me a little crazy."

"Sorry," he says again.

"S'okay. Just tired. So are you. And they're fine." She kisses his shoulder. She wants to bring him back in her direction. There's nothing to worry about, right? She chews her lip thoughtfully, and suddenly the question is there. It comes out before she feels like she's really decided to ask. "So what'd they say?"

"I . . . who?" He looks down at her in surprise. Caught again, and it hurts a little that there's the possibility of her catching him. That it's not a given they'd share this.

"Castle." She pats his cheek pityingly. "You may have noticed that the floor plan of this place is pretty open. You made three phone calls. I'm guessing shelter, emergency vet, emergency vet."

"Ah." He shakes his head. "The perils of sleeping with a detective."

"One of many," she agrees with a tug on his ear. "So what'd they say?"

"Well, the shelter's really only open for emergency intake." He's hedging.

"Castle. I peed while you were gone. You were on the phone before and after. That's longer than it takes to get rid of someone."

"Even me?" he asks, wide eyed. He's still hedging.

"Even you." She prods his ribs. "What did they say?"

"Not much," he says hesitantly. "The volunteer who answered the phone got another volunteer who has rabbits. She said it's really unlikely that it's wool block at this time of year. And it's not common in her breed anyway."

He's chattering. It's a barrage of worst-case scenarios that are entirely new to her. She latches on to the thing that sounds even remotely familiar. Words she knows, anyway.

"Wool block?" She peers up at him.

"It's . . . when they groom themselves, they swallow their own fur," he explains. He's trying to read her. To see how much she really wants to know. She wishes he didn't need to. She wishes it were obvious that of course she wants to know. What's worrying him and why it's fine. Of course she wants to know. "Sometimes leads to an intestinal block and she wouldn't want to eat."

"Please tell me you haven't been up scouring the internet for everything terrible that can happen to rabbits."

The thought devastates her in too many ways to count, but he makes it better. He always makes it better.

"No, Detective," he says with mock testiness. "I spent Alexis's entire childhood reading books, which is what we did before the internet, about every terrible thing that could possibly happen to every possible pet she might ask for."

"Hmmm . . . except that Alexis was born in 1994. There is no 'before the internet' in her lifetime." She clips the pulse low in his neck with the flat of her teeth. An apology. An invitation, though she can't resist the joke. She's playing a role, but so is he.

"Ouch." He claps a hand to his chest dramatically. He takes it up. This is how they are. "Don't remind me."

She laughs softly and dips her fingers under the hem of his shirt. She kneads her fingertips into the tight column of muscle at the base of his spine. He's worried.

He groans, low and visceral. It hurts. He mumbles into her. He tells her it feels good, but the tension isn't going anywhere. He's really worried.

Her fingers move over him. Her hands, and she reads the story of it in his body. Not just this sleepless night, but every one that's come before. He's not new to this. Not that rabbits and kids are the same thing, but he's been here. He's done all nighters imagining the worst. He's spent decades reading up on disasters in a hopeless attempt to be ready for them. To beat them back from his family's door.

She thinks about him walking the floors with Alexis. Drifting to her doorway and peeking in to make sure she's still breathing. Perching on the edge of her bed to watch her toss and turn with fever. To be there in case she woke up and needed him. And Meredith sleeping soundly through it all, if the mono incident is anything to go by. She thinks about him carrying all that worry alone.

"Vet said the same thing?" she asks after a while. He's being quieter about this than she'd like. Then again, so is she. She's not sure what it means. She doesn't know why it's so hard to tell him that she's worried too.

"First time . . ." Her knuckles dig into a particularly vicious knot just then, and he gasps. "Mmm. Don't stop. First time, he said as long as she's drinking, we don't have to worry for a few days. 'Several' days."

"Second time?" She hooks his thigh closer for leverage and grinds the heel of her hand into the knot.

He grunts as something releases. "God, Beckett, I've had that knot since before the internet. I have never loved you more."

She laughs softly. There's relief for both of them here. In this. "Flattering, Castle, but what'd the vet say the second time."

"You're worried." His eyes flutter open in surprise. "Shit. Kate, I didn't mean . . ."

" _You're_ worried." She shoots back. She looks away and tells herself she's not blushing.

"I know, but I . . ." He brushes a kiss over her forehead. "I didn't mean for you to be. I didn't mean to keep you up all night worrying."

"So don't." She reaches far up his spine and drags the weight of her palm down to his waist again, soothing. Putting him back together, and he stills under her touch. It's better, whatever she can and can't say out loud. She can make a difference. "Tell me what the vet said."

"Tempt her with plenty of greens, keep track of her weight and food intake, and stop calling him in the middle of the night," he admits with a sheepish laugh.

She nods thoughtfully. "Partition was a good idea, then."

"I guess." He sounds unhappy. "But the big guy misses her. He just mopes over on his side."

"He misses her food."

She's laughing—trying to tease them both out of this dead-of-night fear—but Castle is right. He does mope. He thumps his back feet pathetically and scrabbles at the plywood partition Castle had jury-rigged down the center of the pen once they realized that he was probably eating for two. He hops from one end of the pen to the other and pushes his nose through the bars. He twitches it furiously like he can force it into a U-turn and reach her.

"That too." Castle yawns. He's still now. Loose and stretched out and expansive under her hands. "But mostly he's lonely."

"Not now," she says softly. She feels him relax, and that's something, even if her own worry is still a tight, hot mess in her chest. She pitches her voice low. He's so tired. He's so worried, and he shouldn't have to carry that alone. "He's asleep now. They're both asleep."

"Mmm. Probably."

He's more than half asleep himself. She smooths his shirt back down. Traces intersecting paths along his ribs and waits for his breath to even out. It doesn't take long.

She gives it a while anyway. She watches as the worry eases from his face before too many minutes more pass.

She nudges gently against him as she untangles her feet from his. She angles out from under the hand at her waist and slips from the bed.

She pads soundlessly toward the office and squeezes through the cracked-open door, wincing as a little more of the light slants across his body. He stirs and settles again as she pulls the door with her, narrowing the shaft of light.

She glides over to the pen and peers in. Sad eyes peer back up at her, and she feels a pang of guilt. He's not asleep. He's lonely.

She reaches for him and his ears fall back immediately. His eyes brighten and he sits back on his haunches, so willing to be happy. He lifts up toward her as she braces a palm under his warm bulk.

She rests him along her forearm and murmurs nonsense to him. She smooths her hand along his fur. Admires the ripple of color over the length of him as she tells herself that she's not trying to figure out which smile he's giving her. Castle swears there are at least nine. He's cataloging them. She's standing firm on the impossibility of rabbit smiles.

"Standing firm," she tells him sternly as she drifts to the other side of the pen. He gives her a smile. It's definitely conspiratorial. She wonders if it's in the catalog yet.

The little one keeps to the shadows. She's a tiny curve. A defiant arc, blacker than black and so small Kate can barely find her snuggled into the folds of the thick towels that Castle insisted were ready for rags anyway. She keeps to the shadows, but her eyes glimmer and give her away.

"You're awake, too?" Kate leans forward. In her arms, the big rabbit's nose wriggles excitedly. He jerks forward, very nearly overbalancing to slop over her wrist and into the pen.

"Hey," she hisses. She taps his head. The rabbit blinks up at her and she'd swear he looks guilty. Guilty but still smiling. She knows Castle has that one already. He tells her all about it when he's explaining. Why dinner is late. Why the smoke alarm is on the dining room table with the battery out. It's the guilty smile that's launched a thousand stories already.

She's in love with them all. Impossible smiles and improbable stories. Kate's in love with them all, but a soft, impatient thump draws her gaze back down. The little one hops out of the shadows and looks up expectantly.

Kate snorts. She hugs the big rabbit higher in her arms. "Looks like she's lonely, too, big guy."

She steps over to one of the armchairs and sets the rabbit down. "You stay right there."

He hops in one excited, lumbering circle, then settles.

Kate returns to the pen and scoops the little one into her palm. A strange calm comes over her as the rabbit gives her a bright-eyed look, shakes herself, and comes to rest.

She was worried, too. She faces that as the last of it washes out of her. She almost wants to wake Castle. To tell him she was worried, too. That he wasn't alone in that. She wants to tell him, and she hopes it'll keep 'till morning.

She makes her way back to the armchair and slides carefully into it. The big rabbit scrambles up over her thigh, clumsy in his eagerness for reunion. Kate draws her knees up into the wide seat and presses the soles of her feet together.

She sets the little black rabbit on her thigh and keeps the bigger one corralled inside the crook of her knee. He clambers nearer his sister. She startles at first. Her ears twitch up and she turns her head away.

"Easy," Kate murmurs. She strokes one ear gently. "She's lonely, too. Just give her a minute."

The big rabbit sits back as though he hears her. As though he understands. As though he can wait, even though he's lonely.

The tiny head swings back toward him. The white smudge of her chin dips down and her nose twitches. The big rabbit is still, but even so, she startles back once, twice.

Kate thinks she's going to turn and run entirely, then. She feels the little body coiling and keeps her palm at the ready. The rabbit gives another mighty twitch, comes to rest for a moment, then eases her way off Kate's thigh and on to the seat. She takes three turning little hops and presses herself into the warm silhouette of the bigger rabbit.

She closes her eyes.

He turns his head toward her. His whole body gives one happy, bright-eyed quiver before he closes his eyes, too.

They're already asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This isn't theory. This is reality. Warm, solid, heart-breakingly adorable reality, and he's in love. He's in love, and they both know how that story goes."

  


"No."

Castle really thought they were past this. The whole _do not engage_ thing. But she's back to just that. No comment. Just _No._

He'd be annoyed if it weren't kind of sad. Sad for _her._

She doesn't stand a chance. He grins down at the dark little rabbit, who is studiously ignoring several piles of neatly labeled pellets. They've already established that Kate doesn't stand a chance.

And anyway, it's perfect. It's the _perfect_ name.

He reaches out a finger and traces the arc of white just above her dark eye. She glares at him. He'd swear his adorable little girl rabbit just _glared_ at him.

He pulls his finger back. She's unpredictable. She's a biter. A biter of _him_ anyway. The two of them regard each other silently for a minute. He's the first to blink.

His head swivels around, but Kate is still studiously reading the paper, firmly ensconced in _No_ -land. Annoying, but the up side is she didn't just see him lose a staring contest with a rabbit.

In Castle's defense, she is _intense_. The rabbit. Though Kate, too, obviously. But the little one is intense. It's one of the many reasons why it's the perfect name.

His mind is still on Kate. Even if she's ignoring them—even in if she's still in _No-_ land—she still draws the eye. She's beautiful and nonchalant. Studied and unconcerned and he's inclined to stare, but there's a warm, insistent nudge at his fingers. His head snaps back around. The rabbit looks up at him, nose twitching impatiently.

"Did you just . . . ?" He peers down at her. Keeps his hand still. She tips the white smudge under her nose down toward the counter and rears her head. Right into his fingers.

He brushes the soft fur between her ears tentatively. The little rabbit looks up at him as if to say _Finally_ before her eyelids fall half closed. He keeps an eye on her as he presses more firmly and widens the sweep of his fingers. She wriggles her shoulders in what can only be called contentment.

He waits for her to settle into it, then draws his fingers back again, just an inch or so. Her eyes flick open again immediately. They flash up at him. Another glare. She tips her head down and bucks forward. She makes solid contact. The flat of her head right against his knuckles.

"Kate," he calls over his shoulder. "You have to see this."

"No."

It's immediate. Her reflex. And he _really_ thought they were done with this. She's not fooling anyone.

"It's not about the name. You have to see this!" Castle turns to scowl at Kate and feels another knock against his knuckles. More insistent now. He turns his attention back just in time. The rabbit is glaring at him again. He sees the barest flash of teeth before his fingers find the spot she likes best. Sometimes. When she likes to be touched at all, this is her favorite spot. Just in front of her left ear. Just above the white of the mask around her eyes. "It's . . . you just have to see it!"

Kate sighs and tosses the paper on to the coffee table. It's all for show, and they both know it. She loves them. This feisty little smudge of black and the lumbering, affectionate heap sleeping off another eating binge on the corner of the counter. She loves both of them. All of them. She never stood a chance.

Castle hides a grin as she crowds up behind him.

"What?" She says grumpily in his ear, but she slips an arm around his waist, and she's straining up on eager toes to peek over his shoulder. "What do I have to see other than two rabbits who are not supposed to be on the counter?"

"Butcher paper," he retorts as he knocks his head gently against hers. He gestures to a series of neat lines demarcating five or six piles of brownish pellets mixed with fresh greens. "Taste test to see which one she'll most likely eat."

Kate harrumphs in his ear, but her arm tightens around him in a brief hug. "Bunny science. Fascinating. This is what I 'had to' see?"

"Just a second." He stirs his fingertips in slow circles high between the elegant black ears and down the slope toward her nose. She twitches once, all over her body. Her haunches bunch and she settles like she's just had the best stretch of her tiny bunny life.

"Ok," he breathes. "Now watch."

He stills his fingers. He feels the heat of Kate's impatience at his back, but he takes his time anyway. He wouldn't put it past the little rabbit to try to Michigan J. Frog him while Kate's watching.

He slowly pulls his hand back, fingers poised against the butcher paper a few inches in front of her. Her eyes flick open.

"Whoa! If looks could kill, Castle!" Kate gives a startled laugh.

"Watch, watch!" He shushes her. Kate pinches his side, and the rabbit makes him sweat. Her stare is pissed off and unwavering. He's just about to give up when she drops her nose emphatically and shoves her head forward.

"She head butted you!" Kate's fingers tighten at his waist.

He feels the same pleased current underneath her words run between them. Adoration. Delight. Love. It makes him brave. Or stupid. Something like that.

"She has a certain tendency to use violence to get what she wants," he says slyly. He cranes his neck and lands a sloppy kiss beneath her ear before she can pull away.

"Castle, _no_."

It's sharp. She means it to be stern, too, but all of her is smiling too hard. Head to toe, she's smiling too hard. He feels it all down his spine. And even if he didn't—even if the smile weren't coming off her in waves—it's progress. _Castle, No,_ means he's getting somewhere. She doesn't stand a chance.

It's so _obviously_ the little one's name.

He shifts to turn toward Kate—to press the advantage—but he's halted by a sharp pain on the tip of his thumb.

" _Ow!"_ He jerks back around. There's a small bead of blood, and the rabbit is looking up at him, expectant and remorseless. "I rest my case."

"So does she." Kate shoulders past him to tap the rabbit firmly between the ears. She looks abashed. For Kate, she has the decency to look abashed. With him, any negative reinforcement is just an invitation to round two. "No biting, you. Even if he _is_ trying to saddle you with a dumb name."

"Dumb?!" He's trying for a scandalized tone, but it's not easy with his thumb in his mouth. "He's the world's greatest detective . . . second greatest," he amends quickly.

"Yes, _he_." Kate sets her hand palm up on the butcher paper. The little black rabbit pauses long enough to make it look like her idea, then hops on board. Kate lifts her and bumps Castle with her hip, nudging him far enough from the counter so she can turn to face him. "And don't try to suck up, Castle."

Castle's mouth opens and shuts. It's too easy. She's trying to distract him into sexy talk, and while he'd usually be more than happy to follow her down that well-worn path, he's not letting this particular conversation slip back into _No_.

He crouches and narrows his eyes. He twitches his nose at the little rabbit. She looks for all the world like she'd love to roll her eyes at him.

"I don't see the problem, Beckett." He shakes his head. "It's a title. It transcends gender. And she _clearly_ doesn't look like a Batgirl."

"What do you have against Batgirl?" Kate shoves past him and heads back toward the living room. "Not that we're naming her Batgirl." She shoots a heavy look over her shoulder. "Or Batwoman or Bat-anything else."

On the counter, the bigger bunny startles awake and scrabbles at the slippery butcher paper. He has yet to sleep through the trauma of the little one being more than a few steps away, and he still misses her pathetically when they're penned up at night. Castle just manages to head him off before he dives head first into the buffet of pellets.

"Dude, you just woke up from a food coma," he scolds as he scoops an arm under him. The rabbit quiets immediately, a happy droop of fur over Castle's arm as they follow.

"Believe me, Beckett." Castle tips back heavily on to the couch next to Kate. It wins him a pair of synchronized glares as the cushions jostle the two of them. "I have nothing against Batgirl. Big Batgirl fan." He turns the rabbit in his arms. Brings him nose to nose. "Crime fighter _and_ librarian? Kind of the total package, right buddy?"

The big rabbit flails suddenly. He fixes Castle with a look that can only be described as grumpy.

"See?" Castle strokes his ears and turns the disgruntled face toward Kate. "Batgirl is great—Batgirl is just _fantastic—_ but the little one just doesn't look like a Batgirl. She's Batman."

" _Castle_ . . ."

She sounds annoyed. She probably _is_ annoyed, but she's also captivated by the little rabbit in her lap. She jumps two fingers from one thigh to the other, then from hip to knee. Batman—because that is totally and obviously her name—gives chase. She pauses every few hops to nuzzle Kate's palm with the kind of quiet, determined affection she never shows him.

"I think you must be Alfred." It's out of his mouth before he can think better of it. Kate's head whips around. He twists his shoulders, holding the big rabbit between them like a shield.

"I just mean she looks up to you. You always settle her down and she never minds it when you boss her around . . ." The big rabbit jerks frantically in his arms as if he'd like nothing more than to bail on the train wreck in progress. "She loves you," Castle finishes a little desperately. "She's not so sure about anyone else in the world, but she loves you."

Kate regards him silently a minute, her mouth a determined straight line. She's not mad. She's not _really_ mad, he doesn't think, but there's something in her eyes that makes his heart race a little. He's not nervous, exactly, but nervous is in the neighborhood.

"She loves you, too, Castle. And him." She nudges an elbow at immense, soft middle drooping down from Castle's arm. The big rabbit squirms happily. "She's just . . . careful."

"Careful," Castle agrees. He sets the big rabbit in his lap. He lifts his arm toward Kate in invitation. "But she's safe here. She's home. Stately Wayne Manor."

Kate mutters at him, but she ducks underneath his arm and shifts closer, her thigh to his, giving the two rabbits a continuous expanse. Predictably, the big one thumps his way heavily over Castle's thigh and halfway on to Kate's. There's a flash of black, and the tiny one is suddenly behind him on the far side of Castle's lap.

Castle lets out a startled laugh and offers a tentative palm to her. She head butts it and settles herself under the arc of his fingers. The big rabbit's nose shifts from side to side as he blinks rapidly in bewilderment.

"She's just keeping you on your toes, big guy." Kate strokes a palm over his head and nudges him in a 180. He perks up on to his front paws as soon as he catches sight of her again. He coils as if to cover the distance in a single leap, then settles back into a slightly pathetic heap spilling from Kate's thigh to Castle's. He looks back and forth between the two of them with sad eyes.

"Don't worry, buddy," Kate murmurs quietly as she trips her fingers along the rabbit's soft length. She burrows her fingers into the hollow in front of his hip and one huge back paw taps out a happy rhythm against her. "She loves you."

Castle looks away before anything too unmanly gets the better of him. He swallows hard, and Batman gives an impatient thump as his fingers falter. He mouths an apology as she tips her head up. He touches a finger to her chin experimentally. She thinks about it a second, makes a half-hearted snap, then arches her neck up. It's something new she's allowing him. He loses the fight against a sappy grin.

He turns to nudge Kate—to show her—but she's already watching him.

"What?" he asks. He wishes for a moment he hadn't set the big guy down. He thinks he might be in need of a meat shield again some time in the near future.

"Why Batman?"

Her tone is conversational. He's seen a hundred suspects mistake it for friendly. He's doomed.

He laughs anyway. It's several miles away from nonchalant, but it's the best of nothing but bad options. It'll have to do.

"Isn't it obvious?" He curves one hand around the tiny backside and urges the rabbit closer to Kate. "First, she has the cowl." He quickly traces the line of white around each eye and goes back to scratching the matching light patch bridging nose and chin. "Second, the violence." His fingers dance away as the little teeth flash on cue.

"No biting. Even when he's wrong." Kate taps her head again with a laugh. But the laugh isn't for him. The serious face is for him. "And?"

"And . . . you know she's good with gadgets." It sounds far more like a question than he wants it to, but he stumbles on. "She can turn on the lamp in the office, and she totally wedged the corner of her plate under the partition and pried it up. Found him with his nose stuck through the gap."

"She pried up the partition?" Kate arches an eyebrow. "The eighteen-ounce wonder lifted a giant piece of plywood."

"Give her a big enough lever and she can move the world." Castle skims a proud palm over the dark body. The rabbit lifts her ears, preening. "Nineteen this morning," he adds with a smile.

"Nineteen!" Kate thumps the big rabbit's solid body. "So she's not sneaking food through the tunnel to Steve McQueen here?"

"Ooh, Steve McQueen!" Castle's face lights up.

Kate snorts. "His name is _not_ Steve McQueen, Castle."

"No. He just wishes it were. I feel you, buddy." Castle sighs and reaches a hand out. The big rabbit's eyes cross as they try to follow his finger. "I don't know what your name is yet."

"But you're _so_ sure of hers." Kate notes quietly.

He kind of walked into that one. They both know it.

She levels The Look at him. He knows The Look, too. He knows there's no hope for a suspect once she rolls out The Look.

There's no hope for him, but he tries anyway.

" _She's_ sure," he says. He cups his hands loosely around the tiny body. The rabbit fixes him with a furious look and bucks against them. "Right, Batman?" He pulls his hands away. She pushes off his lap with a tremendous leap and lands on Kate's thigh.

"See?" He laughs and moves to shepherd the big rabbit on to his own lap.

"Castle." Kate halts him with a hand on his wrist.

"What?" His eyes skitter away. He's getting sick of losing staring contests.

She scoops both rabbits to her chest and angles her shoulders away from him. She swings her feet up on to the couch with an expectant look. "Pillow?"

He reaches to his left, then over her to his right. He stacks the pillows in his lap.

Kate settles back on to them. She pulls her knees up and coaxes the rabbits down toward her thighs. She tugs Castle's hand up over her hip and watches the flurry of noses and paws as the rabbits circle each other and come to rest.

Castle watches her watching them. He's lost in it. He's lost when she tips her chin up. When she meets his eyes, satisfied and unrelenting.

"I know there's a story, Castle." She turns to press her cheek to his arm.

"I told you . . ." He trails off. He knows this particular silence. That he can talk and talk, but the only thing that will fill it is the story. He knows the ground he's on can only charitably be described as shaky.

"You told me _your_ story, Castle. Tell me hers," she says finally. "Theirs." She roughs a hand over the bigger bunny.

"It's sad," he blurts. "Her story. It's sad."

Kate lays a hand over the tiny body. Wriggles her fingertips against the solid flank of the big rabbit where she leans against him.

"Was," she says finally. "It _was_ sad."

Castle dips his forehead to hers. He's grateful, but he'd still rather not go on with this. "Was."

Her lips find his in a lingering kiss. She presses her fingers to his jaw. Breaks the kiss and keeps him close.

"It was a sad story," she whispers. "But she's happy now."

"You think so?" He kisses her soundly. Loudly. Happily.

"I think so." Kate laughs and shrugs away. She puts distance between them and he knows she wants to be sure he's listening. "I know."

He grins. The story comes together in his mind. Drama and humor and pathos. Not just a grim series of facts that it hurts to remember. A stark recitation that he wanted to spare her because she sees so much of it. So much of it has touched her.

And, yes, they're talking about a rabbit, but the loss . . . he wanted to spare her that.

But it's a story now, and it spills out of him then and there. With the four of them heaped together on the couch on a lazy weekend afternoon.

"It all started with a murderous cocker spaniel . . ."

  



	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This isn't theory. This is reality. Warm, solid, heart-breakingly adorable reality, and he's in love. He's in love, and they both know how that story goes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 

* * *

It's the light that wakes her, though she doesn't understand that right away. Her eyes are open suddenly, and she's briefly annoyed. Aggravated with him for sneaking out of bed and turning it on, because she thought things were better since he'd told her the story.

She thought they were both a little less worried, and he might start sleeping through the night again.

She flips on to her other side and studies him. He's sprawled out, face down and heavy. Like he's been that way for hours.

He has, she realizes then. He's solidly asleep and hasn't moved since the pleasantly worn out, sloppy goodnights they'd said a long while ago. It wasn't him. He didn't turn on the light.

"Batman," she grumbles to herself as she spills half out of the bed to root around on the floor.

She's grumbling for all kinds of reasons.

Because this is the longest continuous stretch he's slept since he wandered into the shelter to get out of the rain and saved the two rabbits (he insists) from certain death by bulldog, and it's an absolute miracle that the light hasn't woken him.

Because God knows where Castle tossed her leggings in the frenzy to undress her. Because the loft is painfully cold and the jumble of blankets and warmth and him are exactly how she likes them.

Because it's the middle of the night. Because she's the best kind of tired and doesn't want to be awake. She doesn't want get out of bed.

Because the rabbit's name is Batman. She's really not over that yet.

She—Kate Beckett, NYPD—has a rabbit named Batman and a rabbit to be named later.

And Batman is up to something. Again.

Kate finds her leggings and pulls them on under his t-shirt. She smooths a hand over Castle's bare shoulders, but he doesn't stir. She feels the pull of deep sleep surrounding him. He's out. That's good, she tells herself as she drags her body all the way out of the bed, and it is.

It's better for him since he told the story. He still worries and fusses. He has a lab notebook—an actual lab notebook—tracking what she eats and recording her weight, morning and evening. And he thinks she hasn't noticed the notches at the bottom of the book case. Height markings with BR and LR scrawled neatly next to them. He's ridiculous. He's still prone to hover, but telling the story was good for him. It's better.

It's not exactly better for Kate. She's less worried, but sadder, too. It's an odd kind of mourning that she never allowed herself back then. She grieves for the little rabbit who lost her mother and then her home. She feels it like the losses are her own. As if she can own the sadness now and be retroactively kinder to her 19-year-old self.

It's not exactly better for her, knowing the story, but she doesn't regret asking him for it. Bullying him into it, really, when he would rather have been kind. When he would have spared her that sadness and carried it alone.

She doesn't regret it, though. She'd always rather know than not know. Always.

And when there's a story, she wants him to tell it.

So he did. She made him. And he made it into a story for her. Humor and suspense and tragedy.

The carefully built hutch and the dog next door. A series of mistakes all in a row. A broken latch, a forgotten chore, and a phone call that shouldn't have taken so long. Each one a small thing, but all leading up to one motherless little rabbit that the heartbroken family couldn't see their way to keeping.

She asked and he told her. She'd always rather know.

But it's hard. He was right: It's a sad story.

And she was right, too. She's happy now. Fierce, trouble-making little thing that she is, she's happy.

She's eating better and putting on weight. Growing and getting bolder. She doesn't startle as easily, and when something does scare her, she has the big rabbit to retreat to. When she's not scared, she has him, too. She has his solid, happy devotion to her.

And, unfortunately, his willingness to follow her into trouble.

Kate makes her way into the office. She blinks against the light and wonders what trouble she'll find tonight.

Batman loves cords. Appliances and blinds. Lamps and curling irons and phone chargers. A bathrobe tie that had somehow been left behind in the office. She's not particular. She loves them all enough that there's no such thing as out of reach as far as she's concerned. She tugs and circles and rearranges. She lassos and hooks and occasionally climbs. She gets into _everything_.

They've lost a dozen things already to what Castle insists on calling Acts of Batman. Mugs and picture frames she's toppled and a chewed up fountain pen that was apparently absurdly expensive.

That was probably a two-man job. Her pulling the desk set to the floor and him doing the actual chewing. He still has the faintest hint of an inky goatee. Castle's been calling him Mirror Big Bunny. He holds him up and growls "Kill us both, Spock!" and thinks it's funny every time.

It's a little funny most of the time.

And then there was the paper towel incident. At least two or three rolls shredded throughout the entire loft. The _entire_ loft in the space it took him to move laundry from washer to dryer. That, at least, convinced Castle that they needed actual bedding to shred and burrow into, not five-star linens.

Kate scans the office. Nothing seems to be missing. There's no pile of rabbit bedding emphatically shoved through the bars in protest. There's nothing knocked over as far as she can tell. Nothing trailing across the floor and no tell-tale noises.

There's nothing out of place at all except for a small black rabbit sitting in a warm circle of light next to the push button for the lamp, very much outside her pen.

"You . . . Batman . . . how?" Kate stutters.

Batman regards her calmly, but without much interest. Her attention is on the pen. It's on him.

The big rabbit's nose is pushed through the bars, as far as it will go, twitching furiously.

It's not possible. The pen is metal and the panels link together with heavy, complicated latch plates. She'd checked them herself before bed. She checks them again now. They're secure. The top of the pen is open, but it's also three feet high. The little rabbit stands about four inches at the shoulder if Castle's notches are accurate. There's no way out. There's no way she can have gotten out.

Except here she is, hopping back toward the pen now. Brushing by Kate's bare ankle without pause and sizing up the metal enclosure from the outside. Assessing the situation like she's going to break the big one out.

She is, Kate realizes suddenly. That's exactly her plan.

Kate drops to the floor. She really ought to put her back. She ought to find something to secure the top as the most likely means of exit and figure this out when she's not freezing and half asleep. But she drops to the floor, pulls her knees up, and watches. She's fascinated.

Batman's head swings toward her briefly. She gives Kate a look like she's daring her to interfere. Like she knows what Kate thinks she _ought_ to do and she'd like to see her try. She goes back ignoring her. She goes back to the problem at hand.

She butts her nose against the big one's. He startles into a backward hop. His nose sticks briefly between the bars. The motion barely bounces the pen. Kate peers closely at the join of the panels to the molded plastic bottom, but that's not it. The whole thing rises a fraction of an inch and bumps back to the floor. The metal panel clangs and vibrates, but there's no separation between the two. She didn't get out that way. She must have gone up.

Batman hops along the perimeter of the big rabbit's side of the pen and back again. He sits up attentively and waits as she makes her way back to him. He nudges his head forward, but the little rabbit rears up and bats at his nose with her front paws as it peeps between the bars.

He gets airborne this time and lands with a mighty thump that jars the plywood partition running down the middle of the pen. Kate jerks forward with a yelp as Batman rears up and slaps the metal again. The big rabbit hops straight up and comes thundering down, once, twice, three times. The plywood bumps up and down the first time, then lists to Batman's side of the pen on the last thump. It sticks in a mostly upright position, but it's on a slight angle now.

Batman darts toward it and presses her nose through the bars. She pulls her head back and hops in place. The big rabbit lumbers over to her. He cranes his neck around the plywood and through the bars, pressing his bulk quite a ways up the new incline as he tries to get closer to her. It's steep, but if he'd just turn a little and get purchase with his back feet . . . .

Batman sits up on her back legs. She balances and pushes off. Her front paws hit almost halfway up the pen. She lands again and stares hard at the big rabbit, like she's willing him to understand. He blinks slowly like he's trying to work it out.

All of a sudden, Batman jerks around. A half turn, and Kate finds herself on the receiving end of the kind of glare usually reserved for Castle.

"What?" she says out loud. It hits her then. It's not the first thing she's said out loud. Not by a long shot.

"Sorry," she whispers. She presses her mouth against her thighs and draws her arms tighter around her knees. She holds her breath.

Batman's head swings back toward the pen. Back toward the big rabbit. He thumps his huge back feet unhappily. The plywood shakes with it and shivers a few more inches down. He can make it now. He looks up the incline once, then back at Batman.

He races upward. He scrabbles for purchase and throws his body against the pen when he starts to slide backward. He pushes off his massive back feet and he's up over the top. Half of him is, anyway. He's draped over it with his back feet still hanging down on the inside. He looks down at Batman and up at Kate and she can't tell if he's desperate or embarrassed or if it might be a cry for help.

Before she can decide—before she can do anything about it—he leans far forward and oozes down the outside of the pen. His heavy backside catches up with him too quickly. He capsizes and lands on his head, then tumbles forward on to his back. His paws flail briefly and he rights himself. He comes up smiling.

Batman bounds over to him and he dances excitedly in place. She chatters her teeth at him once and streaks away.

She goes for the warmth of the lamplight. It's the one and only reason Kate gets anywhere near her when she makes a dive after the the dark blur. She doesn't catch her. Her hands close around air, but Batman careens into her forearm and changes trajectory. She runs right into the big rabbit's side as he gives chase. She bounces off him with a frustrated glare. Kate goes on her belly after them both and just manages to scoop the circle of her arms around them.

She's scolding them. Furious syllables in what she only belatedly realizes is a _really_ loud whisper when a shadow falls over the three of them.

"Beckett, what are you doing?"

They all freeze. Three heads swing around toward him in unison. Kate's mouth opens and closes a few times.

"She got out," she says finally. "Then she broke him out. Really he broke himself out. She supervised."

Castle frowns down at her as he stumbles into one of the arm chairs. "You're on the floor. You're yelling at rabbits. And were you . . . singing?"

"You're naked!" Kate retorts as though it has something to do with anything. She doesn't remember singing, but it's not impossible. She's blushes furiously and scrabbles upright, herding both rabbits into her lap as she goes.

"Someone took my shirt," he says grumpily. He opens his eyes wide like he's trying to will himself awake.

"Pants?"

"Pants are complicated. Too many legs and not enough leg holes. And I'm not naked."

He's not, exactly. He has one of the blankets from the bed pulled around his shoulders like a cape. He's tousled and warm-looking and irresistible.

Kate surges up on her knees and thrusts the big rabbit at him. Castle blinks and makes a startled noise, but reels him in. Batman squirms against her shoulder as she twists and finagles her way into the chair with Castle. She testily prods him to shove over.

"Ow. Beckett, jeez." He wriggles to make room until she's settled in the corner of the chair with her legs thrown over his lap. He curls his arm around her and strokes the big rabbit with his free hand. His head jerks toward Kate suddenly. "Wait. She got out?"

"She got out," Kate confirms. She taps Batman on the head. Batman looks at her like she's a traitor.

"I swear I checked the latches."

"You did. She must have gone over the wall."

Castle looks from Batman to the pen. She looks tinier than ever with the four of them heaped together in the chair.

"Over the wall? Over the wall that's like . . ." He frowns. Shakes his head like the math is too much for his sleep-heavy brain. ". . . like twelve times taller than her?"

Kate shrugs. She buries her face against his neck. Her nose is cold and he's still deliciously warm.

"It's how she got him out," she says as she nudges her knee higher toward the big bunny.

" _He_ went over the wall." Castle slides a hand under the rabbit's body and hefts it experimentally. "That cannot have been graceful."

Kate laughs open mouthed against his skin and half wishes they didn't each have a lap full of rabbit. "Not graceful at all."

His fingers find their way inside the wide neck of her shirt—his shirt—and the warmth of him seeps into her wherever they wander.

"True love isn't always," he murmurs as he catches her mouth with his own.

The kiss is interrupted all too soon by Batman, who is having none of it. She worms her way under Kate's chin and breaks for the high ground of the chair back. Castle's hand shoots out and miraculously closes around her.

He brings her close to his face and flinches back. She's livid. Her teeth flash and her front paws bat at his chin.

"Hey!" He shakes her gently. "Do I interrupt you when you're making a move?"

"You just did," Kate points out.

"Different kind of move entirely. She was leaving him behind." He gestures to the big rabbit.

"Never!" she strokes the rabbit's ears reassuringly. "She'd never leave you behind. She was scouting." She takes the little rabbit from Castle and struggles to extract herself from the chair.

"Mmm. Good to know." Castle sweeps his arms under Kate's knees, pressing her tighter against him. "Where're you going?" he asks between kisses.

"Hmmm?" She's supposed to be doing something, but he has her tangled up in the blanket with him now, and it's hard to focus when there's warm skin not quite everywhere.

"Fugitive rabbits," she says, because she vaguely remembers that has something to do with the something she's supposed to be doing.

"Ooooooof." Castle's mouth pulls away from her shoulder with an inelegant pop. His gaze jerks down to Kate's lap where the big bunny is winding up to thump him in the gut again. "Et tu, Brute?" He tilts his head, considering the big rabbit. "Hey . . ."

"Not Brutus," Kate cuts in dismissively. She hugs the big rabbit under one arm and holds Batman to her chest with her free hand. "Don't worry, big guy. I won't let him name you after a murderer."

"Was he a murderer?" Castle asks. "I mean, there were like sixty of them. Would they all have been charged with murder or conspiracy to commit or . . ."

He trails off as he realizes she's ignoring him. She swings her feet to the floor. Castle swipes at her legs, but she dances away toward the bedroom, both rabbits in tow.

"Where are you going?" He sounds alarmed.

Kate turns back toward him, curious now that he's not contemplating the charges in a 2000-year-old murder. "We'll have to set them up somewhere in the bedroom for tonight. I don't think she'll try to get out when when we're right there. Will you, Batman?" she asks as she knocks her forehead against the little rabbit's.

"But . . . " He pushes up out of the chair. "Then _they'll_ be right there. In the bedroom," he adds as though it explains everything.

He shifts uncomfortably. He tugs the blanket closed around himself and it dawns on her.

"Castle, are you worried about . . . psychologically scarring the rabbits?"

"Aren't you?" he shoots back defensively.

She looks down. Batman has that adoring look on her face. The one that's mostly for Kate. The big one is looking at Batman with _his_ adoring look, of course.

_S_ _hit._

She's worried about psychologically scarring the rabbits.

She looks over at Castle. His look is a mixture between adoring and _I told you so._ She's worried about psychologically scarring the rabbits and he knows it. He needs to pay for that as soon as possible.

"Plywood," she barks as she bends to set Batman, then the big rabbit, within the confines of the pen. "She's eating enough. One night of him getting more than his share wont hurt her. Either of them. We top the pen with the partition."

"Yes." Castle moves quickly. He knots the blanket like a toga and wrestles the plywood out and over the top of the pen.

"Not big enough." Kate curses under her breath, but he's already pulling one of the big framed prints off the wall. She darts over to help. They cap the open portion of the pen with it.

Kate walks the perimeter, shoving at the base and thumping the makeshift coverings soundly. They're heavy. They're not going anywhere even if Batman decides to get extracurricular with her escape plans.

Castle follows too closely, bumping her hips with his own, sliding his hands underneath the baggy t-shirt and up her sides and generally doing nothing to contribute to rabbit security efforts.

She drops to her knees just to be sure there aren't any gaps big enough around the base for Batman to squeeze through. She's still skeptical about the Batman-to-pen- height ratio, but she just can't see how else she might have gotten out.

"Kate!" Castle crouches to block her path. "They're fine. Look."

There's a brief flurry of activity in the pen, but the dust literally settles. They've dug out a comfortable-looking burrow sized for two. The big rabbit plops down and Batman nudges at him with her nose, her flank, and one back paw. The big one huffs at her and nudges back, reclaiming a bit more of the space. Batman glares at him, then settles herself in the wide arc of his body. He shrugs his shoulders and comes to rest with a slightly grumpy-sounding sigh.

"They're fine," Kate echoes.

"Are you?" Castle asks abruptly.

Kate looks up, surprised. She's about to say she is. Of course she's fine. But he's watching her intently. A little nervous, but determined. He's not likely to let it go.

"I'm sad for her," she blurts, and suddenly her cheeks are burning.

She tries to look away. She tries to push to her feet and laugh it off, but he's reaching for her. He's tugging her toward him and she's trying to turn away.

He overbalances and falls back on to his ass, but he doesn't let go. He pulls her into him, clumsy and tangled and half naked until they're propped up against the side of the bookcase. He grunts and shifts so most of the blanket is underneath them and she's sideways in his lap.

"I'm sad for her, too." He tucks her head under his chin.

"That's why you fell in love with her." She leans against him. "Her sad story."

"No," he says immediately. Instantly. "I was in love with her way before that. Like, twenty minutes before that."

"A whole twenty minutes?" She laughs, but she believes him.

"That's forever in rabbit time."

He hesitates. He wants to say something. Kate feels the words piling up. Buzzing at her ear, but he busies his lips on her skin instead.

"What, Castle?" She nudges at his jaw with her thumb like she's trying to let the words out.

""I'll always be a little sad for her . . ." The words come slowly but there's nothing unsure about them. "But that's not why I love her."

Kate nods. She lets herself be heavy in his arms. She lets the blush fade. The flood of embarrassment that she's sad for the rabbit. That she's been up in the middle of the night and her scars are showing.

She tips her face up to his and it's a smile that rasps along his jaw now, even though she's still sad. Even though she'll always be a little sad for her. She smiles against his cheek and whispers for him to take her back to bed.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Batman's escape seems to defy plausibility, I can only tell you that I once awoke to a strange crunching sound. I found my bunny atop my microwave, calmly crunching on popcorn kernels. The extremely sturdy hutch she lived in was closed with latches secured. To this day, I have no idea how she actually got out. Or up on to the microwave.
> 
>   
> 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This isn't theory. This is reality. Warm, solid, heart-breakingly adorable reality, and he's in love. He's in love, and they both know how that story goes."

* * *

It bothers her that the big one doesn't have a name.

It bothers him, too, but in a different way. He knows it'll come eventually. He's working on it in the background. He's used to placeholders and fill-ins that will do until more of the story unfolds. Until he really knows who the character is and why he does what he does.

It's part of the problem. They really don't know his story. Only that he thumped his way into a brownstone front yard one day and the tenants figured he was too big to be anything but a pet. They brought him to the shelter and put up signs around the neighborhood, but no one ever came looking for him.

"And then she showed up and you fell in love," Castle likes to tell him. "It's the defining event of your bunny life."

But Kate will have none of it. She says he deserves his own name and shoots down anything even remotely Batman related. Castle doesn't disagree. He likes the idea. He likes that she feels strongly about it. That he should have his own name.

But he doesn't like that it bothers her so much. He doesn't like that it's another thing that brings out the sadness in her eyes. Even when she's down on her belly playing with the two of them. Even when she's silly and fond and brimming with affection, it bothers her that the big one doesn't have a name. It makes her sad.

So he tries things. He keeps trying things out loud like he does when he's working, and it's not really helping.

He tries out Scrambled Eggs for a few days. The McCartney principle, he explains, but apparently she doesn't have much respect for Sir Paul. Scrambled Eggs takes them all the way back to just _No._

He's used to trying things out and seeing what sticks. He's fine with jokes and short-hand silliness until the right name drops in his lap. And sometimes wedging something in there—something dumb and obviously wrong—will shake the right thing loose.

But Kate's not a fan of that technique. She's not a fan at all, and he keeps getting himself in trouble.

"Lennie," he says brightly one day. Batman is tearing circles around the big rabbit. He keeps trying to jump into the game, but she's too fast for him and he's staring down at her in particularly dopey adoration. It's funny. Castle thinks it's kind of funny.

Kate doesn't. She really, _really_ doesn't and he immediately feels like an ass about it.

In his defense, he was thinking more Looney Tunes than Steinbeck, but it's too late now. She _really_ doesn't think it's funny, and he's kicking himself. Steinbeck Lennie is definitely not funny.

She goes all shy about it all again after that. Shy with him. She hasn't really gotten past shy about it as far as the rest of the world is concerned. He's pretty sure she thinks no one else knows about the rabbits, and that is going to bite him on the ass someday soon. But for a while there, she wasn't shy with him.

For a while there, most mornings meant a better than even chance that he'd slide an arm around her just as he was waking up and find the three of them drowsing on her side of the bed. He'd slide an arm around her and act surprised. He'd murmur against her skin that he thought the rule was no rabbits in the bed and she'd smile over her shoulder. She'd tug him closer and murmur back _Time off for good behavior._

But after that—after Lennie—there are no rabbits in the bed. There's no heaping herself in the chair with them when she can't sleep or building a rabbit-sized pillow fort on the living room rug while he's writing.

There's no humming the '60s Batman theme under her breath while she watches the little one hatch some new plan for destruction. No super-villain monologuing while Batman devises an ingenious means of escape from whatever it is they're trying this week to keep the two of them contained.

It's just when he's around, he thinks. Batman doesn't seem to be plotting an uprising, and the big one is as happy and affectionate with her as ever, so he thinks it's just that she's gone shy around him again. He feels like an ass.

And he misses it. He misses the unapologetic softness and the bright, smiling challenge in her eyes every time she breaks one of her own rules. He misses seeing into that part of her. A happy, unscathed expanse of heart. He misses that sentimental Kate.

He misses her and he completely overdoes it the next time he sees her. The Kate who isn't shy.

It's a while after the Lennie incident. A few days at most, probably, but it stretches out to something like forever in his mind. He misses her.

He gets home earlier than he thought he'd be able to make it, and he's not expecting her to be there, either. She has a little bit of a cold or a summer flu or something. The two of them have been rubbing each other the wrong way lately.

He'd like to take care of her. He'd like to make a fuss and bring her tea and toast and make her stay in bed.

But she's hell bent on pushing through it. So she shivers in the heat of the sun and sweats in the blast of air conditioning and gets quietly furious with herself when she makes simple mistakes. Less quietly furious with everyone around her, and he thought it might be a good idea to stay away from the precinct for a day or two.

But the excuse is half improvised. There's plenty he needs to do, he just usually spreads it out over a few days and fills up the rest of the time moaning about it. But now it's done after a few admittedly painful hours of focus alongside Gina, and he makes himself go home instead of dropping by the precinct for the second half of the day.

He thinks he must have left something on at first. The iPod in the bathroom or maybe the laptop on a youtube channel. It never occurs to him that it's her. It's so unlikely that he misses her keys in the bowl by the door and the propped open hutch in the living room. Even when he recognizes her voice, it doesn't really occur to him that it's her until he's standing in the doorway squinting into the dim bedroom.

It's two in the afternoon on a weekday and it's her. It's all three of them in the bed. It's the most unlikely thing in the world.

She must have every pillow they own in the bed. They're in haphazard piles around her. Tall and short. Neat and sloppy. And every square inch of sheet, blanket, and comforter is swaddled around her, though one long, bare leg is visible. Peeking out from hip to toe just under the hem of a t-shirt of his that she must have dug out of the hamper. His side of the bed is absolutely empty.

Batman is tucked into a niche of pillows a few inches above her Kate's head. Her ears are back and she's looking regally down at the two of them—Kate and the big rabbit—nose to nose right beneath her.

He thinks about turning around. She hasn't heard him. She must not have, or she wouldn't be lying there in the low light, asking the big rabbit questions. Wanting to know his story and making guesses about what kind of name he should have. She must not know he's there because she's shy with him now.

He thinks about turning around. He's on the verge of it when he hears his name. He hears the surprise and hesitation. He hears her pulling herself together. He hears her drawing away, and he completely overdoes it.

He climbs in with her. He shoves off his shoes and worms his way inside the wall of pillows. He burrows under the vast pile of blankets and pulls her to him. He whispers _Don't go_ into her hair and she's quiet. She's quiet, but she pulls his arm tighter around her and doesn't ask what he means.

She falls asleep for a while. She must be really sick. Her skin is burning hot under his fingers and he thinks he should get her something. Aspirin and chicken soup and trashy novels. _Temptation Lane_ and the kind of magazines she swears she never reads. He should take care of her while she'll let him, but he doesn't want to wake her. He doesn't want to give this up.

He reaches up and scratches Batman on the chin. He talks quietly to the big rabbit and asks if the two of them have been taking care of Kate since he obviously isn't. Since she obviously would never let him take care of her.

She wakes on her own before too long. The big rabbit circles and settles himself on a new patch of pillow and it wakes her.

"I thought the rule was no rabbits in the bed," she croaks.

"Dumb rule," he says as he sweeps the hair back from her cheek and presses a kiss to it. "You're really warm."

"No. Freezing." She jerks the blankets higher. She pulls her leg underneath and tugs the whole arrangement up over her chin and nose. She shoos the big rabbit further under her arm.

She looks ridiculous. _They_ look ridiculous. Nothing but two pairs of eyes and the big rabbit's ears peeping out over the top of the blanket, with Batman keeping watch from above.

"Let me get you something," he says suddenly. It's urgent. So he doesn't say something else. Something that's too much. He just wants to take care of her, but he's afraid he'll say something that will make her go shy again.

She stares up at him for a second, then edges her nose over the rim of blankets. She tilts her head up toward Batman. "They need to eat."

"Ok?" He thinks there's more. He waits for it.

"They need to eat," she says again. Her jaw is tight like she's trying to keep her teeth from chattering. "But I'm cold."

"I'll feed them," he says. He has the feeling there's something else. Something he's still not getting.

He reaches up for Batman. Kate makes an agitated noise.

"I'm cold!"

He laughs. He can't help it. She writhes under the covers, but he gathers her to him. She might never let him take care of her, but he's not letting her get away.

"Kate Beckett." He kisses her throat. Under her ear. The top of her shoulder. She's burning up and shivering. "Kate Beckett, are you suggesting that I feed rabbits in the bed? Do you _know_ how many rules that breaks?"

She narrows her eyes at him. She crooks her arm and manhandles the big rabbit up on to her chest. The rabbit narrows his eyes, too.

Castle looks up at Batman. Batman's eyes are always narrowed. When she's looking at _him_ anyway.

He's outnumbered. It's awesome.

"Ok. Ok. Apparently we feed rabbits in the bed now." He slips himself out from under the blankets and tucks them tight around her. "Don't you want anything?" he asks quietly.

"A popsicle." She lifts her chin defensively. "I know there are popsicles."

"Of course there are popsicles," he says with a dismissive wave. "But I thought you were cold."

"I am." She grimaces. "Throat hurts."

She's . . . it's not like her to give even this much away. She must be really sick.

"Kate, maybe . . ."

"Castle!" She drums her feet under the covers. Batman sits up and chatters at him. The big rabbit looks beside himself with distress. "It's just the flu. I feel bad and Esposito ratted me out and Gates made me go home. I'm cold and I _want_ a _popsicle!_ "

"Popsicle. Rabbit food. Ok." He brushes a kiss over her forehead and tries not to laugh out loud. He tells the rabbits to keep an eye on her.

She's asleep again by the time he comes back to report on available popsicle flavors. He tucks the small bowl in the niche with Batman. She digs her paws into it and tosses a flurry of shredded greens in the air. They rain down over her and she works her methodical way around her pillowy domain, delicately retrieving every bit.

Castle is at a loss as far as the big rabbit goes. His nose twitches mournfully at the bowl, but he won't budge when Castle tries to coax him off Kate's chest to eat. He winds up hand feeding him at great risk to life and fingertip.

The big rabbit's devotion to Kate hasn't lessened his enthusiasm for his food. It wakes her before too long. The movement, the noise, or Castle's muttered curses—something wakes her, but she doesn't let on.

She's the worst fake sleeper in the world, but Castle doesn't out her right away. He keeps up his one-sided conversation, arguing with the big rabbit about how much he needs to eat and how fast. Reminding him that he's an herbivore. He tosses more and more ridiculous comments to Batman. About how the loft is descending into anarchy, what the big rabbit's name isn't, and what exotic illness Kate might have.

He's not even half way through his store of mostly fictional Victorian maladies when she's shaking with laughter. He sets the big rabbit's perfectly empty bowl aside and smooths a hand over her cheek. "Jig's up, Beckett. What flavor popsicle?"

"Popsicle?" She cracks open a horrified eye. "Castle, I'm so cold."

"Ok. You're officially impaired. Addled with fever." He presses the back of his hand to her forehead. "Aspirin or Tylenol? And don't say neither."

"Batman," she says grumpily. "And Tylenol."

Castle nods. He reaches up for the little rabbit. She slaps at his palm with her paw, then edges her way on to it. Castle lowers her into Kate's waiting hands. She sets the rabbit on her hip and waves Castle away as he tries to fuss.

He fetches Tylenol and makes her swallow down most of a glass of juice with it. She grumbles to the rabbits as he tries to cajole her into picking something from the fistful of take-out menus he's grabbed. Eventually he ignores her and orders a massive quantity of hot and sour soup and two or three spicy things she'll probably nibble at when she wakes up hungry a few hours from now.

He clears the dishes and putters around the kitchen. He's trying to think what else she might want or need, but he's stalling, too. She feels lousy. He knows that, but he also feels like they've made up after a fight they weren't really having.

She's not like this. She's never like this. She's had the usual ailments in the time they've been together. Colds and stomach viruses and headaches that won't let go. She's sprained and twisted and banged up all kind of body parts, and she's never like this. She's annoyingly stoic and far more likely to freeze him out. More prone to pull away than ever ask for anything.

She's never like this. It's new and he wants to dive in. He wants to seize the day and take care of her with a vengeance. He wants to take care of her, and he knows he's two seconds from overdoing it.

He stalls long enough that she calls out for him. He hurries back in to find that she's kicked all the covers off.

"It's too hot. They're too hot," she gestures weakly at the rabbits. They're both trying to crowd higher on her chest.

"Sorry, let me . . . " He trails off as he arranges the sheet over her legs and folds the rest of the blankets down and out of the way. He plucks the rabbits out of her arms and murmurs that he'll be right back.

"Castle." There's a hitch in her voice that stops him before he makes it to the door. "I don't . . . I want them here. They're just too _hot."_

"Ok," he says carefully. He wants to help. He wants to do the right thing. Or at least not the wrong thing. "I can . . . set up the pen in here?"

"Can't you . . ." She rolls her eyes. Squeezes them shut like it hurts. "Castle, get in the bed and keep them over by you and don't be hot."

He snaps his mouth closed.

"And shut up," she adds. She bites her lip and peers at him through barely open lids.

"Three out of four . . ." He drops the rabbits on the outside of the pillow wall and clumsily keeps them distracted as he shucks his pants and button-down.

"Do I get to pick?" She grumbles, but gives him a tired, grateful smile as she presses her cheek to the cool linen of the fresh pillow he eases under her shoulders.

"Not if you keep sassing," he retorts as he settles beside her.

He pulls Batman up on to his hip. His hand darts out to tug her back as she make a break for Kate, but the little rabbit is unconvinced until Kate delivers a tap on the head and a stern _Stay put._ The big one senses something isn't quite right. He edges cautiously toward Kate, too, but settles down heavily on Castle's ribs once Batman does.

Kate alternates petting the two of them with one tired hand. Her eyes drift closed.

"I wish he had a name." Her fingers come to rest between the big rabbit's ears.

She's all but asleep and her voice is low enough that Castle almost doesn't hear it.

"He does, though," he says just as quietly. He bumps his fingers over hers and trails them down to the rabbit's tail, then back up again. "We just don't know it yet."

There's a pause. A kind of expectant silence that he wants to fill even though he knows he shouldn't. Even though he knows she will if he can wait. He bites the inside of his cheek and brushes his nose against her temple.

He waits.

She does. She fills it up. "How do you find it out?"

"With rabbits?" He bites his cheek again. Harder this time, because it sounds like he's teasing and she's not great at that. She's not great at being on the receiving end.

She just snorts and bumps him with her knee, though. "With anything. Characters."

He skips his fingers from the big rabbit over to Batman. He touches her tail. She hates it. Her head whips around and she tries to bite.

"Sometimes they tell you right away," he says as he soothes her out of it. It's easier these days, even when he intentionally riles her up. "Like Nikki."

That has Kate's attention. He feels it. The way her chin arcs toward him and her eyes flick open. She snorts, though. She's wary. "That was just to piss me off."

"No." He thinks about it. "Well, I'm not going to say that wasn't a bonus at the time . . ." She stops lavishing attention on the rabbits long enough to flick his ear, but he grins through it. "But I just knew her name right away. I usually keep a couple of ideas around in case it's already been taken somewhere or it won't work for some other reason, but not with her. She was always Nikki Heat."

Kate pulls her lip between her teeth again and doesn't say whatever she was going to say. Not right away. Castle waits. He busies his hands with the rabbits and it's easier. He waits.

"So why . . . " She breaks off and scrubs a hand over her forehead. She's frustrated. "What makes it her name? Why is it a good name?"

"Well, you first of all." He feels her stiffen at that and rushes on. "The _K_ s and the _T_ s in your name. Kate Beckett. Nikki Heat. They both sound good in the same way. They feel good to say. And they look good on the page."

She thinks about that. Her fingers trip over his hip briefly and pull back, but he can tell she likes it. She hasn't thought about that and she likes it. She's still a little pissed off about, it too, though. After all these years it probably just pisses her off a little more that there's a reason and it's something she likes. Something that makes sense.

"So, Nikki Heat is like Kate Beckett only 'kinda slutty'." She makes air quotes and pitches her voice low in a doofy imitation of him.

"Well . . ." He turns his head toward her and suddenly it's not enough. He shoos the rabbits on to the bed next to him and twists on to his side.

"That ok? Not too hot?" He gestures to the two of them, but they're being good. Curling into each other and keeping their distance.

Kate skims a palm over each of them and nods for him to go on.

"Yeah, that's . . . I could have put it better at the time." He gives her a sheepish look. "And I never _exactly_ thought about the stripper potential. But yeah. Your name only sluttier."

"And slutty makes it a good name _because?"_ She lifts an eyebrow and he wonders if she's feeling better or just annoyed enough to look like it.

"Because it's an unlikely name for a cop. Because you want the reader to know right away that she's gotten shit for it all her life, and here she is, this badass detective anyway. You want them to know that people are going to underestimate her because of it and she's just gonna wipe the floor with every last one of them." He stops, suddenly aware that he's going on and on about it.

Her eyes are half closed and her gaze is fixed on the rabbits. He's going on and he's not sure she really cares.

He shrugs. Tries to downplay it and give her an out if she wants it. "It's a good name when you only have 250 pages or so."

She looks up, then. She looks at him, intent and curious, and he thinks she does care.

He thinks she's interested, and maybe it's something else she's shy about. He wants to ask, but he doesn't know exactly how. He's not sure how to ask the woman he loves—the woman he's loved for so long—how it is that the two of them know each other so well in some ways and not at all in others. He's not sure how to ask why it is they're still unexpectedly shy with each other after all this time.

"So what happens when they don't tell you?" She drops her gaze again. She's flickering her fingers under the big rabbit's chin and holding Batman at bay with the occasional tap. "How do you find out?"

"You can wait. Start telling the story and the right name usually shows up. Sometimes you guess. You use something that's close enough until you get it right."

She nods but doesn't answer. She's not satisfied and he wishes he had something more. Something better. He wishes he knew the big rabbit's name.

He watches the rabbit lifting himself up closer to Kate, drinking in the affection like he can store it. Batman rams her head into his side and he waddles to make room for her, never breaking contact with Kate's fingers.

"That's right, big guy," she says softly. "Share the love."

Castle gives a startled laugh. Kate looks up at him. He smiles and shakes his head. "I was just thinking the same thing. That's it's like his mission in life. He soaks up love so he can share it."

"Maybe his name has something to do with that."

They chat quietly for a while. They reject Cupid and Don Juan and Lothario. The possibilities are too ridiculous or too silly or too sappy. She calls out Barry White and Castle runs with it. They laugh themselves tired. They're on the wrong track and they both know it, but there's a lightness to all of it. She's less tentative and more determined even when he laughs. Even when she says _Maybe . . ._ and it means _Absolutely not, Castle._

The buzzer rings when they've just about exhausted the love-related options. He scrubs a hand the wrong way through the big rabbit's fur and kisses the top of her head as she smooths it back down. "You'll know. You'll figure it out."

"Me?" She looks up at him aghast.

He grins down at her as he pulls on sweats. He's sure suddenly. It's suddenly obvious that he's been part of the problem all along. That it's not a name he'll be the one to know. "Yeah. You."

"Me," she repeats. She stares down at the big rabbit. He smiles up at her.

Castle takes his time dealing with the food.

He hears the low murmur of conversation from the bedroom. Laughing now and then dropping low. Conspiratorial and not at all shy.

  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This isn't theory. This is reality. Warm, solid, heart-breakingly adorable reality, and he's in love. He's in love, and they both know how that story goes."

He's making her feel like the bad guy, and she's not sure why. She's not even sure whythere _is_ a bad guy here, let alone how she got to be it.

He needs to write.

He's been playing hooky a lot lately. Her stupid flu lingered longer than it should have. It settled in her chest and made her whole body ache so badly that she barely argued when he insisted she call in sick.

She slept for what felt like a million hours in a row, but she knows he didn't get much done even so. That he was worried about her, but he went in to help the boys out a little. To bring her news and reassure her that the sky wasn't falling because she'd actually taken sick time. And she fussed over the rabbits and let him take care of all three of them. And there were no casualties. Neither of them went crazy.

She's better now. Mostly better. Her ribs are still sore and she wakes up coughing now and then, but she's better.

They're back to work, only the weather has been gorgeous. After long weeks of swollen skies and heavy, sodden days and nights, a huge storm swept through and left behind the kind of summer it seems like New York hasn't had since she was a kid. The air is warm and sweet and the sun lingers forever and he's been playing hooky.

They've been playing hooky together. She leaves things for the next day. She hands things off, and they slip out of the precinct together when the sun is still high in the sky. She turns her phone all the way off when she's not on call, and she doesn't check her email on the weekends.

They run away together. They walk and linger in parts of the city neither of them knows very well. They shiver in the delicious cool of unfamiliar movie houses and wander odd stores and stalls. They stop for exotic drinks and feed each other strange foods. They run away.

And they stay home. The rabbits love the rooftop, and it's spectacular in the evenings. So he coaxes her up there with blankets piled high and soft. With chilled wine and fruit and cheese tucked into a ridiculously adorable picnic basket with a strange little wicker sidecar that hitches to the side and just so happens to accommodate two rabbits.

It's a miracle that they haven't chewed it to pieces. It's a miracle the way the two of them hop placidly around the hills and valleys of the blankets instead of tearing off to wreak havoc. That they're content to explore nearby and then come back to sit nestled up in his lap or hers. To nestle together and watch the sunset.

He tells stories and she does. About themselves. About each other. They recount rabbit escapades. They embellish and make things up out of whole cloth. Their lives unfurl and tangle up. All these things they never knew about each other.

She loves it.

She loves playing hooky and the vacation rhythm they've fallen into, but it can't go on forever.

He needs to write.

Gina is going to have him gunned down on the street if he doesn't, but he needs to write for himself, too.

He's antsy. _Antsier_. He's been fidgety and breaking things. More things. And the words bubble up like they're trying to get out any way they can. Like there's no more room for them inside. He says strange things. Stupid things. Thick, beautiful phrases and awkward asides at inopportune moments.

He needs to write. They both know it. But he's making her the bad guy.

"I just don't think I can do it."

He's sitting on the living room rug. His legs are stretched out in front of him, ending in electric blue socks peppered with Roswell alien faces in bright neon colors.

Batman is curled up in her over-sized coffee mug—because somewhere along the way, Batman acquired an over-sized coffee mug that is hers alone—and the big bunny is loping around coffee table, occasionally stopping to paw at Castle's knees in search of affection.

"They'll be fine." Kate sits at the island and leafs through the paper.

It's a normal morning, or it should be. That's all this is. There's no bad guy here. They can't play hooky forever.

"But I'm going to be here," Castle says plaintively. He reaches for the big bunny, who, as usual, looks far too happy to really carry the point he's trying to make. "How can I condemn them to bunny jail if I'm going to be here the whole time?"

"It's _hardly_ bunny jail, Castle."

Kate eyes the hutch. It was a ridiculous investment. Gorgeous hardwood, custom made. Ridiculous, especially when they already had that huge pen.

But she thinks about the rabbits. The way they're thick as thieves every morning when she lets them out to tear around the loft for a while before she and Castle leave for the precinct.

The way they mob Castle in the evenings. They rush into his arms and climb his shoulders, eager for some new adventure. And still they hop into the hutch under their own power every night. Circling and circling. Kicking up dust and settling down in a contented swirl of dark and light.

It was a ridiculous investment, but it's brought some semblance of peace back to their lives. Night upon night of blissfully uninterrupted sleep.

The dynamic duo has demonstrated on more than one occasion that they can break out at will. But they don't, in general. They spend peaceful days high above the floor and look out over the loft on one side or the city streets on the other. They have plenty of space inside to chase and romp. To burrow together and cuddle up most of the time and retire to their separate corners every once in a while.

They're together, day and night, and they're content. She has to admit that's worth it at any price.

"They're perfectly happy in there," she says. It's true, but she's trying too hard. There's more conviction in her tone than she feels. It's true, but he's making her the bad guy.

"Usually." It's a grudging admission. "But they know something's up today. She does, anyway."

He gestures to Batman. He's not wrong. She's curled up in her cup, but her eyes dart around restlessly. She should be playing. Paws peeping out over the rim to tease the big rabbit. To demand affection from Castle and chase him off when she's had enough. But she's not doing any of that. She's watching.

The big rabbit senses it, too. He dashes in and out of the legs of the coffee table in an almost frantic ellipse. He noses at the side of Batman's cup and turns tail to thump at Castle's thigh like he's trying to have enough fun for three.

Castle dutifully pets him and skips his hands around the carpet, chasing and being chased. Batman chatters now and then. She dangles a paw over the edge of the cup every once in a while. But it's all half-hearted. There's a back-to-school listlessness about it all.

The big bunny hops to the edge of the rug. He sits up tall and cranes his neck in Kate's direction. She sighs and gives up on the paper.

Everyone is making her the bad guy today.

She tops off her coffee and crosses to sit behind Castle on the couch. He tips his head back toward he like he's surprised, but he runs with it. He catches her hand and kisses the inside of her wrist. His lips linger long enough to make her eyes flutter closed. He waits a beat and steals a sip of her coffee.

"Castle!" She knocks his shoulder with her knee as she retreats deeper into the couch, curling the mug against her chest.

"Lost mine," he says with a shrug. "And if it's any consolation, yours is gross. I'm suffering here, Beckett."

She snags a lock of unkempt hair and tugs sharply. He winces and grumbles for show, but settles with his head against her shin.

Batman scrabbles and turns in her cup. It's clumsy, not that you would know it from the way the she's looking Kate up and down. Cool and regal. It's not quite their usual stand off.

It's like she knows something. Like she knows the morning is ticking away and Kate has to go soon. Like she knows Kate is the bad guy.

"It'll be fine," Kate says, more to herself than to him, but Castle has clearly been waiting for an opening.

"Maybe I should just go in with you." He turns toward her, looking up mournfully.

"You need to write." Her fingers travel to his cheek without her consent. He hasn't shaved, and her nails catch pleasantly against the stubble. "And I need to get work done."

"But I can write anywhere." He tips his head all the way back, pleading with her upside down.

She leans forward and gives him a heavy look. He has the decency to blush.

He really can't. When it's like this—when he's been putting it off for a long time—he can barely write in his office. Until he gets back into the rhythm of it, he can barely write with the blinds drawn. Everything unplugged and no distractions at all. And he's been putting it off. They've been playing hooky.

She stares down at him. She hovers, and he lets that particular lie go, but he's not ready to surrender.

"You get work done when I'm there." His head falls forward a little. He jerks his chin at the ceiling in a sullen gesture. "We get work done."

"It's my superpower." She unfolds herself. Leans forward and lets her lips graze his ear. Tangles her fingers for a moment in the collar of his ratty t-shirt. "Getting work done even when you're there. But today you need to write."

She swings her legs to the side and slides out of reach. He makes a disgruntled noise and tries to snag her by the belt loop.

"That's not even in your top five superpowers, Beckett," he insists. He brushes the big bunny off his lap and starts after her.

"Castle." Her fingers snag the upright of the bookshelf. She pauses at the door of the office and turns.

"What?" He pulls up just short of running into her.

"Rabbit jail if you're not going to supervise." She gestures to where Batman is rocking herself forward. She tips out of the cup. The big bunny is at her side in an instant and their heads are together. They're conspiring.

"They're fine," he says testily, hardly bothering to look.

She shoots him an exasperated look as she shoulders past him. She scoops the two of them up and marches toward the hutch. They fight her. Both of them. The big rabbit thumps her ribs hard and Batman actually snaps her teeth a hair's breath from Kate's knuckle.

"Hey, no!" Castle rushes up behind her, alarmed. He takes Batman from Kate. He envelops her tiny body in his huge palm and taps her hard on the head. "No."

He reaches in and sets the little rabbit far to the back of the hutch. He brings the mesh front down quickly. Just in time for Batman to throw herself against it with another angry flash of paws.

He turns toward Kate with his arms out, ready to take the big rabbit from her, but she jerks back, hugging his bulk close.

"Why are you doing this?" She's appalled. By the thin needle of a plea in her own voice. By Castle's unease and the fact that Batman just tried to bite her. _Her._ She's appalled, but the next words come anyway _._ "Why are you making me the bad guy?"

"I'm not!" Castle's face is blank. Shocked. His hands drop away and he steps back from her. "Kate," he says helplessly. "I'm not."

The big rabbit crawls further up her shoulder. He shoves his face deep under her chin and nuzzles her ear. It breaks off another piece of her heart. Tears well up, and she doesn't have a hand free to deal with them.

"I just . . . " Castle's eyes dart from Kate to the hutch. He's at a total loss. "She didn't mean it. Neither of them meant it. They just . . . they like their routine, and she knows something's up."

He breaks off just as Batman hurls herself against the mesh front of the hutch. Like they might have forgotten in the last ten seconds that she's having none of this. The big rabbit stirs. He looks from Kate to Batman unhappily. He nestles closer to Kate's neck and paddles his back feet against her collar bones in distress.

Kate feels the fight or whatever this is rush out of her suddenly.

"I'd better . . ." She trails off. "Can you take him?"

Castle gathers up the big rabbit wordlessly. Kate keeps her eyes on the floor and heads for the office. She hears the hutch open and close. The low hum of Castle's voice and Batman's now-quiet chatter as she settles.

She feels Castle hovering in the doorway. The shadow of him soaking up the sun as it pours in through the glass wall of the office. The weight of his silent apology, even if he doesn't know what it's for. Even if she doesn't.

"She knows something's up because you've apologized a thousand times this morning."

Her voice is low. She didn't mean to speak. Not necessarily, but she finds herself turning. She puts herself at right angles to him. Right angles to the door, as if it's all she can manage. She finds herself being careful with her words, but she goes on.

"You're apologizing for me like we don't do this every day. Like the two of us don't leave every day."

She gathers up her shield and her cell phone. She pats her pockets and does a visual sweep of the shelf where she keeps her things. It's mechanical. Depressing and familiar, but then he's there, suddenly behind her.

"So, Detective, you concede that Batman understands English." His arms slide around her waist. "And to think of all the times you've mocked me for spelling out things that are not meant for delicate bunny ears."

"I'm not conceding anything, Castle," she protests. She's laughing. It's half-hearted. All of it's half-hearted, but the air clears a little. She lets herself lean into him. "She doesn't have to understand English to notice that you're acting strange."

"Strange? Me?" There's a half grin underneath the words. He's relieved.

She is, too.

He's making her laugh like he always does. She wants it. She wants the light. She doesn't want this stony, helpless upset that she doesn't really understand.

But that's there, too. Side by side with the ease that always comes with his arms around her and his cheek rasping over hers. It's there, too, and she can't help feeling like the point of the whole sorry scene she just made is slipping by.

"Strange," she repeats. "Different." She grabs on to it. The good feeling and the bad together. There's something. There's something she doesn't want to slip by. "Not shaving. A t-shirt instead of a button-down. And those _socks_."

The last part is a defensive maneuver. It works a little too well. She misses the warmth of him. The drag of stubble and the low rumble of his voice. She misses it immediately when he steps back from her and looks down at his feet, perplexed.

"Socks?" He hikes up his pant legs. He lifts one foot, then the other.

"Those are definitely 'at-home' socks," she says as she points and sidesteps him. She's laughing with him, but that's not all. He knows it, too. He's listening. "You like being put together too much to wear those out of the house. Not that I'm arguing for letting them see the light of day."

"So," he says slowly. "Batman doesn't understand English, but she tracks my grooming habits and knows about 'at-home' socks?"

"You keep them in a different drawer." She points out drily. "And she is the world's greatest detective," she adds, because he's still staring at his feet. He's smiling a little at the way she knows him, but he's lost and unhappy, too.

"Second greatest."

He corrects her automatically, and she steps into him. She winds her arms tight around his waist and she feels him let out a breath.

She wants this to be over. Whatever this hard part is, she wants it to be over, but she feels her head tip back anyway. She feels herself waiting for him to look at her.

He does and she finds herself back at the beginning. She doesn't know how she got there and she doesn't know how to leave it behind.

"You need to write, Castle. You _want_ to write. And when you got up this morning and put on those awful socks, you had every intention of staying home to write. So why are you making me the bad guy?"

He doesn't say anything right away. He's back there, too. At the beginning and it's on his lips again. The same denial. The insistence that he's _not_ , but he doesn't let himself say it. He looks away.

He looks out the glass and into the sun and he says something entirely different.

"I've been . . . _we've_ been having a really good time lately."

He stops. He looks back at her. Studies her and catches a curl between his fingers. The sun is there, too. A bright streak right through the heart of the darker strand and the dusting of freckles on the back of his hand. Sun she can just barely see out of the corner of her eye.

She doesn't say anything. He does, though. He says something she's not expecting at all.

"Will you come home?"

"Castle . . ." Her heart sinks. She's at a loss.

"Early," he amends quickly, but it's not quite what he means either. "Regular people time. A reasonable hour."

"You know I can't always . . ."

She's at a loss, but he's abruptly happy. Relieved. Like he has it. The thread of things.

"No, I know. Not always." He kisses her forehead. "If you catch a body, I know you have to, then. But you won't . . . you won't stay 'till all hours if you don't catch a body. If you don't have to. You'll come home?"

She thinks about it. These last few weeks and the way the sky hasn't fallen. The way she's pushed things about herself this way and that. Let go and rearranged. Thing about them and how their lives fit together. The way he's done the same.

They've been having a really good time lately, and the sky hasn't fallen.

"You asking me to play hooky, Castle?" She gives him a hard look. The one she knows he sees through. The one that makes him smile.

Most of the time it makes him smile, but he's serious now.

"I'm asking . . . can hooky be regular? Not every day," he shakes his head. "I know it can't be every day. But . . . I like nights and weekends and . . . I like us like this."

"I do, too," she says quietly. "I like us like this. And I'll try. But you have to try, too."

"Me?" His face falls. "Me," he says flatly. "Ok."

His face falls. She doesn't understand, then she does. She realizes or maybe admits it. That she doesn't say it out loud very much. Or maybe not at all.

"I miss you when you stay home," she says before it can retreat. "I miss having you with me. Working together. But you can't keep putting off your own work like this. You can't just not write until you get like this."

"Like what?" He juts his chin out at her, but he's doing a terrible job of hiding a smile.

"All . . . .scruffy," she wrinkles her nose. "Unkempt. Slovenly." She backs away. A step for each word. He comes after her, faster than that.

"You like scruffy." He catches her by the elbow. He reels her in. "I have a considerable body of evidence suggesting that you like scruffy."

"Hmmm. Scruffy has its moments." Her arms go around him, but she catches a glimpse of her watch. "But not this one." She groans against his shoulder. "Gonna be late."

"Not regular people late," he mutters as his lips travel further into the depths of her collar.

"Yes, regular people late." She breaks away from him with a reluctant twist of her shoulders. "I'm sorry. I really have to go."

He nods and steps out of her path as she darts through the office door.

He trails along behind her, slowly enough, but she stops suddenly. He does run into her this time. She turns toward him just then.

They stand for a moment, a melancholy collision of limbs a few steps from the rabbit hutch.

Kate reaches out. She runs a regretful finger along the dark wood of the frame. Batman watches intently. Still for the moment, but not exactly settled.

All is not quite forgiven. Not yet.

Kate sees it clearly, then. The way this particular summer day will play out.

Castle will spoil them. He'll open the hutch the minute the door closes behind her and they'll run roughshod over him. His attention will wander. He'll forget they're out and about, and the two of them will get into everything.

 _Everything_.

But they'll miss her. She'll miss them.

And she'll come home early. At a decent hour, and he'll still be writing. Caught up and oblivious.

She'll come home at a decent hour and she'll find them tangled up in something. Hopping around the ruins of something else.

She'll scold and he'll come out of the office, startled and blinking and making excuses.

She'll pull him away. She'll tug at him. She'll tell him it's time to stop working. That there's an adorable wicker basket to pack and rabbits in need of a rooftop.

She'll tell him there's a sunset that needs watching.

She'll ask him to play hooky.

  



	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This isn't theory. This is reality. Warm, solid, heart-breakingly adorable reality, and he's in love. He's in love, and they both know how that story goes."

  


* * *

"He's in denial," Kate tells the rabbits as they hop around the array of mostly empty luggage scattered on bedroom the floor. Batman works at the zipper of Castle's heavy leather shaving kit, while the big rabbit wears himself out playing tug with one of the interior straps on the big suitcase.

"And she's deflecting," Castle calls out from the far side of the room.

She's on sprawled on her stomach with her chin hanging over the edge of the bed. Her oversized sweatshirt is all rucked up underneath her, exposing the sweep of her lower back, and she just _happens_ to be wearing one of her tiniest pairs of sleep shorts.

Castle gives up. He has never in his life wanted to do anything less than he wants to pack right now.

The pile of folded laundry and the sea of dry cleaners' bags are too overwhelming. And she's too tempting. Every strategically bare inch of her is too tempting.

He sweeps everything that isn't Kate off the bed in one motion and clambers half on top of her.

"She's the strong, silent type." He continues to address the rabbits over her shoulder as he burrows under the worn fabric of her sweatshirt to find skin. "She sees outward displays of emotion as a sign of weakness, so she's pretending she's not going to miss me."

The rabbits cock their heads for a single beat and turn their backs on him, absolutely in unison.

He feels the peal of laughter rumble through Kate's body beneath his. That and the happy sound of it get him most of the way to a smile. He presses it into her shoulder blade.

She turns her face half toward him, but he's hiding. She knows anyway. That he's not quite smiling. She knows, and she reaches behind her back until her fingers find his.

"Not pretending anything," she says. She pulls their linked hands forward and tucks the messy knot of them under her chin.

"So." He sighs dramatically. He lets his breath tickle the back of her neck and enjoys the shiver it calls up. "You've finally grown tired of me and you _genuinely_ won't miss me."

She huffs at him for that. She nudges an elbow back and catches him off guard. He tenses. He overbalances and she's able to flip to her back beneath him, rocking him on to the bed beside her.

She's silent. Peering at him in a way he'd rather she didn't right now, so he hurries on. He calls up his inner Martha Rodgers and sets the scene, his voice low and his lips a breath above the skin of her shoulder.

"You won't miss me at all. You've been waiting for this. An opportunity to escape. To execute the final phase of your plan. I'll return only to find the loft as cleared out as my bank accounts. Nothing but picture wire on the walls and an empty rabbit hutch in the living room."

She tugs on his ear. Hard. She pulls his face up to hers and kisses him.

"Not pretending anything," she says again. "Gonna miss you. All of us."

"Oh." He's smiling now. He's kissing her and smiling. "Ok, then."

"But . . . . " She kisses him again, then ducks away. "I won't be _able_ to miss you if you don't pack." She wriggles out from under him and rolls for the edge of the bed. "Your flight leaves in like eight hours. You _have_ to pack."

"Can't pack." He army crawls after her. She jerks her knees up, but it's the wrong move. He already has her by the hem of her very tiny shorts. "There are very happy rabbits in my luggage."

"Rabbits!" She sounds alarmed, which means she's forgotten about them entirely. He takes it as a good sign, even though she's twisting her upper body over the side of the bed again. "Oh God, Castle, she's disemboweling your shaving kit."

"Mmmm." He slides his palm up the smooth expanse of her thigh. "Good news."

"How is that good news?" She struggling. Slapping at his hands, but it's half hearted, and he hears the hitch in her breath as his fingers creep higher along her inner thigh.

"Electric razor. Cordless. Nothing in there she can hurt herself on." His lips follow the recent path of his palm. "And until she removes every last thing and turns the case into yet another personal burrow, she'll be too preoccupied to be psychologicaly scarred when I ravish you."

"Ravish." Kate laughs. It's throaty and not nearly as dismissive as she was probably going for. "And what about the big guy? What about _his_ fragile psyche?"

"I can hear him snoring." Castle crawls higher, dragging hands and lips and whatever's convenient over her her body as he goes. "I like his psyche's chances."

* * *

He remembers when he used to love this. Travel. A new city every day. Dawn to dusk to dawn again. All of it packed with people and noise and bright lights. The constant stream of brash sensation. The sharp brilliance of passing encounters, as intense as they were fleeting.

He remembers when this used to feel like it made his life possible. Being able to have this and pack it away. To always turn homeward and still have this. A part of his life he felt like a man his age—a man with his unbelievable luck and money—ought to insist on. A part of his life that he couldn't have in New York. Not simply and not exactly.

Not that he's ever regretted Alexis. He hasn't. Not once from the second that he found out that Meredith was pregnant. Since he felt that weight settle on him.

Conviction that he wanted to be a father, even though he had literally never given a moment's thought before.

Certainty that he didn't—couldn't ever—love Meredith the way he wanted to love his child's mother. That they were both too young. Too stupid and selfish and not ready to make the kind of family he could suddenly picture with perfect clarity. The kind of family he hadn't known he wanted and, in an instant, it seemed he'd never have.

Realization that he would be alone. That he would fight Meredith for something—for what little she could give a child. He'd fight the urge to be done with her and insist on something. But he'd be alone in it, or as good as.

He's never regretted anything about Alexis, but there was a time when this felt like living. When it felt like the means to steal another part of life back. Away from her. Apart so it wouldn't touch her. When it felt like a way to cheat anything like resentment. To always come home, satisfied and ready to be a father again.

He remembers when leaving one part of life and coming back to the other felt like a victory. A strategy for being alone and not alone in the best possible way.

He remembers all of that in the time it takes the plane to taxi.

He's homesick before he feels the belly of the plane rumble at wheels up.

He thinks about the ocean opening up far beneath him. The time difference and what a bitch that's going to be, especially since Paula is punishing him. He insisted on as short a trip as possible, and she has him scheduled within an inch of his life. He thinks about all the things between him and home, and he hates every one.

It's a long flight. No WiFi, even though there was supposed to be, and he can't settle down to anything.

He flips through the _Skymall_ catalog, but doesn't get very far.

The garden section has a hanging ornament—a swashbuckling rabbit clinging to a carrot—and he's more than a little sniffly as he thinks about Batman slapping him on the nose and crawling up his shoulder to nuzzle his ear. The big rabbit sprawling over his chest to edge his way under Castle's chin. Kate in the doorway telling him again that she'd miss him. They'd all miss him.

He pulls out the paperback he brought with him and shoves it back into his carry-on almost immediately. He can't remember why he thought it would be interesting.

He tries closing his eyes. He's exhausted, but that's no good at all. Even with a drink he downs too quickly. Even though they got no sleep at all.

She'd spent hours telling him he _had_ to pack. Hours laughing against his ribs, his voice low and reasonable as he explained why he couldn't just yet. Her voice rough and gasping _Yes_ into the pillow. Her eyes fluttering closed and her legs winding around him. _Yes, but_ then _, you have to pack._

Closing his eyes is no good at all.

He pulls out the iPad and plays half-hearted games for a while, but his attention wanders. He's too easily frustrated.

He unwraps headphones and hopes he might at least doze in front of something not too demanding. He calls up the list of videos and blinks at it. He doesn't recognize a single thing. He thinks at first he's more tired than he'd realized.

Then he thinks it's Kate. He scrolls quickly down the screen and he knows it's her. She's messed with it. Every one of the dumb movies he'd loaded up is gone.

He smiles, huge and stupid. The thought crosses his mind that he hopes everyone else is asleep.

He doesn't really care, though. It's Kate.

He has a mystery to solve.

* * *

It takes him a long while. The pilot's announcements get few and far between, and the flight attendants all but disappear. The cabin darkens and the hours pass. The ocean widens between him and home, but he's not as lonely. She left him a mystery.

There's nothing immediately obvious tying the list together, and he's distracted by the facts of it all.

It must have taken time. Planning. She doesn't use the iPad much. He'd have noticed her with it, so she's been sneaking around. Creeping out of bed, probably. Stealing ten minutes at a time when he's distracted and never letting him find it out of place.

She's good. Of course she's good.

He runs a finger around the perimeter of the screen and thinks about his fingerprints and hers overlapping. He slips the sleek weight of the iPad out of the case and into his hand. Palms the back, like he might find the warmth of her hands saved up there.

He peers closely at the long left margin. The silvery metal is dusted with something. A tuft of whatever it is snags at the top corner of the case. Fur. Black mingled with brown and cream. The clue drops into place and he pictures her, curled on her side on the couch, penning the two of them with her body and whispering to them. Batman attentive and the big rabbit adoring as the three of them plot together.

He goes back to the list. _King Kong_ is first. The Fay Wray version, because she wrinkles her nose at any of the remakes. She's a monster movie snob and he loves her for it. There's _The Golem_ , too, and he thinks about her tipped back in the stiff chair of the restored theater, her face lighting up at the first notes of the live organ accompaniment.

 _Ghostbusters_ kind of fits with those two. Monsters and serendipity. _Kong_ and _The Golem_ had been an odd double feature they'd wandered into one afternoon. _Ghostbusters_ was a different day. A midnight showing they'd happened by when Alexis had demanded a sleepover with her furry siblings.

But it's not just monsters, and it's not just their shared memories. There's an animated version of _Gulliver's Travels_ from the '30s that he's never seen. She's talked about sitting beside her grandfather in a matinee. Feeling grown up because she didn't even hold his hands during the scary parts.

There's _The_ _Princess Bride_. He knows they both love it. They have their shorthand. Lines of dialogue they trade back and forth, but they've never watched it together. That particular problem looms large all of a sudden. He can't possibly wait to remedy it.

He wonders briefly if he can talk her into a Skype movie date while he's on this stupid trip. But the next second, he knows that won't be good enough. That it will require rabbits and popcorn she makes on the stovetop and being able to hold her. But they need to do that. They need to do that first thing when he's back.

He taps through things. Watches a few minutes here and there. Skims over beginnings and endings and iconic scenes.

There are more links. Connections he can make between two or three of the things she's chosen if he comes at the puzzle sideways. And then there are things that don't seem to fit at all.

There's _The Brave Little Tailor_. It's short enough that he watches the whole thing. The RKO logo catches his eye. That's a connection to _King Kong_ , but nothing else.

There's a strange YouTube video that's all _Game of Thrones_ clips. Characters shouting "Hodor!" and snippets the oversized stable boy's dialogue. She doesn't like the show much, so he really doesn't get that.

A sudden burst of static over the intercom sends him halfway out of his seat. He can't make sense of the garbled announcement, but the flight attendants are suddenly in the aisles, tapping shoulders and checking seat belts.

Something clicks. _Giants._ He has no idea where the thought comes from, but he knows it's the key. Not just monsters or strangers in a strange land. Not just innocent, well-meaning things turned terrifying by sad circumstance. Giants.

He races his finger over the screen. He has the list memorized, but he wants to check. He wants to see something. He pulls the earbud out on the aisle side and hastily wedges the iPad down next to his thigh. He grabs the unused blanket from under the seat in front of him and masks as much of the light as he can as he scrolls desperately for it. _The Iron Giant._ The last thing she added.

They had watched this together a long time back. Early days, when he couldn't help but watch her out of the corner of his eye. Worrying every time it was his turn to pick, trying to unravel more of her every time it was hers.

That night, she'd made a show of rolling her eyes about yet another kids' movie, but he knew by then that she didn't really mind. That she liked having an excuse for this kind of thing. That he was more than happy to be whatever excuse she needed.

He'd started to choke up two minutes in. Halfway through, he was a complete mess. And she was quiet. Absolutely quiet. He'd wanted to dig a hole and pull it in after him. He'd spent the rest of the movie not really watching. Wondering what the hell had possessed him.

In the end, he'd dashed off to the bathroom. Splashed brutally cold water on his face and come back, red and blotchy and fooling no one. And there she was on the couch. Exactly where he'd left her, with her feet flat on the floor and her hands folded in her lap.

She'd looked up at him and made a sudden small gesture. Something she cut short, but not before he saw the flash of white. A single crumpled tissue clutched tight in her fist. She'd looked up at him, and when he didn't ask, she'd offered. She'd opened her mouth and had to clear her throat just a little. She told him it was good. That she'd really liked it.

He thinks about hijacking the plane. About turning the fucking thing around right now, but she'd probably be annoyed. She'd probably call him a drama queen.

He jams his index finger against the icon instead and can't believe how long it takes for the video to spin up. He'd managed to smile and wave the flight attendant off the first time, but they're making their way back toward him now. He flicks his eyes down at the progress bar and just barely manages to swallow down a triumphant _Yes!_

She's paused it at a particular moment. Fast-forwarded most of the way through the movie so the bar sits a little more than a minute from the end. He taps _Play._ The camera pulls back on the family walking away from the statue, little Hogarth safe and upright on the Giant's palm. The scene fades to the boy's room. The statue gives way to wallpaper studded with delicate stars.

The box rumbles and tips on the nightstand. Hogarth makes his way to the window and watches the bolt tumble down the roof and off through a field until the blue glow winks out. An ocean away, bits and pieces march and roll and skip through the fog. The Giant's face lights up in a smile and the credits roll.

He's busted then. The flight attendant's heavy hand lands on his shoulder. He's pretty sure he only escapes a stern talking to because he's blotchy and his nose is streaming. He nods clumsily and powers off the iPad. He holds up the blank screen for her to see and she edges away, looking like she's glad to be done with him.

Everything takes forever. They make at least three different approaches and pull back up into the air at the last second. He swears they'll never be on the ground.

He has it, but he doesn't have it, and it's torture that he can't scour the iPad for more clues.

She's been thinking about it all along. Since she was sick and he told her she'd be the one to find out the big rabbit's name. It's on her mind all the time, but she's quiet about it. Serious, and he has to be so careful.

He catches her sometimes. Talking to the two of them or scribbling away on a scrap of paper. He finds the cast offs that roll to the corners of the room when she doesn't quite make the wastebasket. He catches her, but he never mentions it. He backs quietly out of the room and tosses the scraps for her. He buries them deep so he won't be tempted to look.

He doesn't want her to think he's laughing. That he'd ever make fun. He doesn't want her to be shy about it, but this is how she's been.

But she has it now. Something to do with giants. It's great. It's _great_ and he wishes he'd thought of Fezzik. He really likes Fezzik, but that's not it.

Stay-Puft is something he thinks is brilliant and she'd never consider it in a million years. That would definitely get a simple _No._ But he wonders about Ray and Egon and Zul. He loves that she entertained anything like it even for a second. Even if she ended up shaking her head and saying _No, Castle_ under her breath.

Gulliver is good, too. He has a short blurry video on his phone of the big rabbit waking suddenly to find himself tangled up in a particularly dense array of cords, courtesy of Batman. He blinks comically and frees himself with a single, mighty hop. The video ends with Kate's laughter ringing out and a shaky close up on Batman's very pissed off face. Gulliver is good, but it's not what she went with.

He doesn't quite have it and he wants to know. He loves that he needs her for the final piece, but he wants to _know._

The pilot finally announces that it's safe to use phones while they taxi to the gate, but he's stupid with lack of sleep and eagerness and missing her. He forgets how to make the international roaming work and has to sit down to figure it out as soon as he's finally off the plane.

It's just past sunrise on a Sunday here. The airport is just coming to life. Just him and someone with a roaring vacuum cleaner at the otherwise abandoned gate.

The phone finally connects and everything grinds slowly. His email count spools up. He shifts impatiently in his seat. He wants to call her, but it's absolutely the middle of the night back home and he has a feeling she didn't have any better luck than him with sleep after the car picked him up.

He waits, and the whole screen finally comes to life. He had a feeling and there it is. A text with a photo attached. Two rabbits who aren't supposed to be on the counter, but they're in coffee cups.

Batman's has had an upgrade. It's the same dark, dusty blue ceramic, but there's a black sweep across it now, complete with the the tiny, cowled head like a cameo at the top, and the white letters sloping inward, toward the center—a more than passable rendition of the logo from the 60s TV show. It's clearly done by hand and he wonders if she did it herself. He wonders how she managed to steal Batman's coffee cup, even temporarily, and live to take a snapshot.

The other cup is new entirely. Not really a cup at all. It's more a bowl with an afterthought of a handle.

It's icy white with just a few silvery lines to suggest the snowy landscape. The Giant's head is tipped just a little to the side, exactly the angle of the big rabbit's when he's listening attentively. The eye sockets are bright and warm and the gunmetal jaw curves up. A happy ending all in itself. The big rabbit looks _thrilled_ as only the big rabbit can. His nose tips down over the rim of the huge mug, pointing to the seven careful letters: FERROUS.

It takes a while to make his hands work. To type out seven letters of his own. _Perfect._

He climbs to his feet, tired and wanting a bed all of a sudden. Even one that's an ocean away from home.

The phone rings while he's trying to remember if anyone ever told them where his luggage might eventually be. Someone must have, but he's too tired to remember. If he even heard it at all.

He fumbles the phone as he steps on to the escalator. It takes him a few seconds to answer and he's worried that he accidentally dropped the call. "Kate?"

"Really?" she says. "It's ok?"

Her voice is thick with sleep, but there's a keen edge to it. Uncertainty. It's out of place and he wants it gone. He wants to chase it away. He wants to kiss her and feel her mouth open under his in a pleased little laugh. He wants to hold her and pile on to the couch. The four of them.

It's dangerous. There are way too many planes he could hijack here.

"Perfect, Kate." He settles for the words. Just for now. "Perfect."

* * *

A/N: Again, thanks so much for indulging this unexpected corner of fluff in my brain. If you haven't seen _The Iron Giant,_ I just can't recommend it highly enough, but it's a tearjerker. Oh, and the Skymall swashbuckling rabbit thing really exists . . . some things you just cannot make up.

  



End file.
